Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has responded to the Chinese foreign minister’s claim that America is spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
At a Tuesday briefing, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, accused politicians in the United States of “lying through their teeth,” adding that they ought “to reflect on their own problems and try their best to control the epidemic as soon as possible instead of continuing to play tricks to deflect blame.”
Pompeo shot back the following day, calling the criticism “classic communist disinformation.”
“[Chinese officials] know that this happened in their country,” Pompeo said. “This is classic communist disinformation. This is what communists do,” Pompeo told Fox & Friends Wednesday morning.
“The Chinese Communist Party now has a responsibility to tell the world how this pandemic got out of China and all across the world, causing such global economic devastation,” he said.
Pompeo added that while the U.S. knows that the virus originated in Wuhan, it is unclear where exactly the virus started. He highlighted the U.S. effort to send Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts to Wuhan to try to stem the tide of the virus, which were repeatedly declined by Beijing.
“I’ve been heartened to see Australia [and] other countries joining us, demanding an investigation — because while we know this started in Wuhan, China, we don’t yet know from where it started.”
The comments come after Chinese state-run media questioned the reliability of the U.S. data on COVID-19 infections.
Bloomberg reported that China Central Television has been ratcheting up attacks on the U.S. response to the pandemic, saying that the secretary of state is “turning himself into the common enemy of mankind” and that he has “has exceeded the bottom line of being human.”
President Trump also fired back at China and the World Health Organization on Wednesday during a meeting with Louisiana Gov. John Edwards.
“We’re not happy about it, and we are by far the largest contributor to WHO,” Trump said. “They misled us. They’re literally a pipe organ for China.”
