We ran a post on Wednesday on a tweet by RawStory reporter Matthew Chapman, who claimed that people who are most adamant about finding the origin of COVID-19 can't actually articulate why:

The Washington Post famously ran a piece in 2020 headlined, "Tom Cotton Keeps Repeating a Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory That Was Already Debunked." That conspiracy theory was that COVID escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China that was performing gain-of-function research. Fifteen months later, the Post stealth-edited its headline to read, "Tom Cotton Keeps Repeating a Coronavirus Fringe Theory That Scientists Have Disputed."

Even Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler had a change of heart:

Didn't he mean to say "the fringe Wuhan lab-leak conspiracy theory"?

The whole discussion was brought up yesterday by Nate Silver, who weighed in again:

So that's the reason the lab leak talk became "toxic." Because of folks like Cotton fueling conspiracy theories.

China will never be held responsible for millions of deaths worldwide.

A U.S. senator shouldn't have brought it up? You mean a Republican U.S. senator.