Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Monday advanced a logic-defying theory that China purposely unleashed COVID-19 on the United States to oust Donald Trump from the presidency and get Joe Biden into the White House. (Watch the video below.)
Bartiromo and Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) were discussing the claim that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab and China tried to suppress the information. But Bartiromo took it a step further.
“I mean, is there a chance that China released this virus on America intentionally?” she asked. “Disrupt the country, get Donald Trump out, get your man in there, Joe Biden, and then cover it up?”
Wenstrup, who chairs a pandemic committee, didn’t fully bite.
“Well, they certainly didn’t try to protect America, did they?” he replied. “I mean, so whether it was intentional or accidental, they seemed to be aware of it. And I could be wrong on this: President Xi was telling Donald Trump everything’s OK. And Donald Trump was repeating what President Xi said. Now Democrats call President Trump a liar, but it seems President Trump was just repeating what President Xi said. Obviously, it was more dangerous.”
There are a few big holes in Bartiromo’s speculation. Namely, the virus inflicted death and sickness worldwide, not just in the United States, as Wenstrup himself noted, according to Mediaite.
And China was hit hard by the pandemic as well. So the upside for China in a far-fetched plot to unseat Trump for Biden isn’t really apparent.
But facts haven’t stopped Bartiromo from embracing or enabling conspiracy theories and pushing misinformation.
Wenstrup, who boosted claims the Chinese were working on bioweapons devised from the coronavirus, accused Democrats in general and former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci of ignoring the possibility that the virus came from a lab.
“I don’t understand why Dr. Fauci wouldn’t want to have the debate over whether this came from the lab or whether it came from nature,” he said, per Mediaite.
Fauci has repeatedly expressed support for more research into the origins of the virus but has doubted the lab theory.
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