Sen. Tom Cotton blasted the media for acting as “apologists” for the Chinese government amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The Arkansas Republican told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday that it is relevant to question if the coronavirus began in a lab in Wuhan, China.
“The mainstream media are largely apologists for Chinese communists, and they will accept Chinese communist propaganda,” Cotton said. “They immediately try to accuse anyone who raises these reasonable questions as conspiracy theorists that are accusing China of creating a biological weapon.”
The coronavirus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, and Cotton was one of the first lawmakers to question whether it leaked from a biochemical lab near the city.
“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said in February. “But because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”
He said there are two labs, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Wuhan Institute of Virology, that have conducted research on bats and the coronavirus. Cotton denied ever saying the virus was created by the Chinese government as a bioweapon, but highlighted that due to China’s “dishonesty,” it is appropriate to question the origins of the illness.
“The reason I have raised these questions from the very beginning is because of China’s statements and their actions,” he said. “After concealing the virus for many weeks in December and then minimizing its severity for most of January, they then peddle an origin story about the food market in Wuhan.
“Given their dishonesty and the proximity of these labs, which we know were working with coronaviruses, it is only reasonable and responsible for us to ask the question and demand the answers,” he added.
The coronavirus has spread across the world in the last few months, infecting more than 950,000 people and killing more than 48,000 as of Thursday. China’s reported cases make the country the fourth-largest outbreak as of Thursday, but U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that the country is covering up cases and deaths.
