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Trump using China as coronavirus scapegoat to distract from own ‘dismal failure’: Analyst

Thursday, 07 May 2020 6:28 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 07 May 2020 6:28 PM ]

Dennis Etler

The Trump administration is blaming China for the coronavirus pandemic to tarnish Beijing’s global reputation and deflect domestic criticism of the president’s own failed response to the outbreak, a US political analyst says.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claim Washington has proof the COVID-19 outbreak started in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

“The charge is being directed against it by the likes of Pompeo and Trump are really slanderous and without any foundation whatsoever, Dennis Etler said Tuesday in a phone interview with Press TV.

“You really can't believe a word that they have to say. They even contradict themselves almost immediately,” Etler said.

“They have ulterior motives to want to try to stigmatize China and that's part of their game plan,” he added.

“The whole response by the Trump administration has been a dismal failure, a debacle, and rather than own up to their own failure, they have to search for a scapegoat and of course China is a very likely target for that.”

The World Health Organization says the US has provided no evidence to support Trump’s claim that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.

"We have not received any data or specific evidence from the United States government relating to the purported origin of the virus -- so from our perspective, this remains speculative," the UN health agency’s emergencies director Michael Ryan said.

WHO, intel reject Trump, Pompeo’s claim COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab

The World Health Organization says the US had provided no evidence to support US President Donald Trump’s claim that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.

Scientists have condemned conspiracy theories about the Chinese laboratory, saying the new coronavirus jumped from animals to humans, emerging in China late last year, possibly from a market in Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.

Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci echoed the WHO's statement, saying that, "If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, (the scientific evidence) is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated."

The US has the world’s highest coronavirus death toll and infections, with more than 70,000 deaths and over 1,212,000 cases.

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