torsdag 7. mai 2020

Trump's anti-China theory implodes

The big lie of the Trump administration is that China is the cause of America's problems. The meme has worked for a while, since it plays into American smugness that if China is succeeding, they must be cheating. Trump and his right-wing allies upped this game recently by claiming the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of an accidental release from a Chinese laboratory and that China's "cover up" blocked an effective global response.

According to CNN, the still-secret findings of the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) pour cold water on this claim. So too does Trump's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Yet just this past Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted, "There is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan." Such charges by the Trump administration and by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas are reckless and dangerous. They could push the world to conflict just as the Bush Administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq pushed the US into war in 2003.