Sen. Lindsey Graham said he believes former President Donald Trump would have won the 2020 election if his favored Wuhan lab leak theory on the origins of COVID-19 had been proven before the November contest.
The South Carolina senator made the prediction as he joined a cadre of fellow Republicans blasting health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of the media for once downplaying or outright dismissing the theory that in recent weeks has gotten a more serious look under the new administration.
“If Trump was right [about the lab leak theory], it would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, I believe,” Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “And if we could have proven that early on in 2020 it was a lab leak coming from China, not occurring naturally, the public would want revenge against China, and who would they turn to: Biden or Trump?”
“If it were known in February that Trump was right [in] 2020, I think he’d be president today,” he reiterated later in the interview.
Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic received intense scrutiny and controversy over the course of the 2020 campaign. Tony Fabrizio, a Trump campaign pollster, even conducted an autopsy that determined Trump lost the contest to President Joe Biden largely because of his performance in dealing with the health crisis.
Still, Trump and his allies have claimed vindication in recent weeks following intelligence reports that went beyond a State Department fact sheet saying, “Several researchers inside the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.” As a result. Biden ordered the U.S. intelligence community last month to undertake a more thorough investigation into the origins of the disease.
During his speech over the weekend at the North Carolina state GOP convention, Trump demanded China’s government pay $10 trillion in reparations for the damage caused by the pandemic and took aim at Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, saying, “He’s been wrong on almost every issue, and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also.”
The first reported COVID-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Beijing has fervently denied the lab leak hypothesis from the start and claimed it has been fully transparent and cooperative with international health inspectors. Meanwhile, Trump has maintained confidence since the early months of 2020 that the novel coronavirus outbreak originated at the lab.
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Referring to a Feb. 19 letter signed by scientists, condemning Trump and other political figures who gave credence to the lab leak theory, Graham said, “I think this letter by these scientists was orchestrated by somebody to shoot down the idea of the lab leak because they were worried about their own a** being in the sling cause of their own relationship with China, and I think there was a political motivation here to destroy Trump’s credibility.”
On May 26, Biden gave the intelligence community 90 days to “redouble” its investigation into whether COVID-19 originated naturally or from a Wuhan lab leak.
