President Trump downplayed the severity of Chinese assertions about the coronavirus.
During an interview Monday, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked the president about dubious claims by China, Russia, and Iran about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, citing the Washington Post.
“How long are we going to let these countries get away with that, and do we have a counterstrategy like the truth to tell the rest of the world?” Kilmeade asked.
“No. 1, you don’t know what they’re doing, and when you read it in the Washington Post, you don’t believe it. I don’t, I believe very little when I see it. I see stories in the Washington Post that are so fake and are so phony. I have stories that are such fake stuff, and that’s No. 1,” Trump said.
It was unclear what report was being referenced by Kilmeade, but the New York Times and Washington Examiner have published similar reports about Trump’s State Department warning about coronavirus disinformation campaigns by geopolitical foes of the United States in recent days.
Kilmeade pressed the issue, saying, “But you know China has already done this.”
[Click here for complete coronavirus coverage]
Trump agreed, pushing back on claims that the virus originated with the U.S. But he also stressed other countries play the blame game.
“They do it, and we do it, and we call them different things, and you know, I make statements that are very strong against China, including the Chinese virus, which has been going on for a long time. I mean, I wouldn’t say they were thrilled with that statement, when they said our soldiers did it. They said our soldiers did it. I said you mean the Chinese virus? And all of a sudden they call and they say let’s talk nicely. Yeah, sure that’s — hey, every country does it, but they build it up, and we handle that, and they probably handle it, but countries do that.”
Members of the U.S. intelligence community reportedly informed Trump earlier this year that China, which is widely believed to be where the coronavirus originated, was lying about the seriousness of the outbreak, which has since infected more than 741,000 people on every continent but Antarctica.
A report published by the Washington Post on Friday said officials informed the president that China “appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak” and “were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”
Well-documented evidence indicates China misled the World Health Organization about the severity of COVID-19 to prevent investigations in Wuhan, where the first case of the coronavirus was reported. One study indicated that if China did not mislead the world about the virus’s severity, the spread of the coronavirus would be significantly less expansive.
