Whoopi Goldberg: ‘Politics Got in the Way’ of the Truth on Lab Leak Theory

Whoopi Goldberg acknowledged that politics tainted public reaction to the lab leak theory amid discussions on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday, The View held a conversation on FBI Director Chris Wray concurring with the U.S. Department of Energy that Covid “most likely” emerged because of a Chinese lab leak, as opposed to occurring naturally. Goldberg brought this up with her colleagues and pointed to Jon Stewart’s reflections on how much blowback he got in 2021 when he defended the lab leak theory’s plausibility to Stephen Colbert.

“He’s right. The politics got in the way of a lot of looking for the truth,” Goldberg said. “They still are not saying definitively, and that’s a problem. They still don’t know for sure.”

From there, Goldberg hypothesized that the backlash to Stewart was the result of concerns about rising hate crime rates against Asians at the time. Goldberg also blamed Donald Trump for Stewart’s backlash, arguing that the former president politicized the lab leak theory by stirring up anti-Asian rhetoric throughout the pandemic.

“If you know who had not started it with that, had he not made it about that…It probably would have been listened to a lot differently,” Goldberg said.

Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed “the effort to silence [the lab leak theory] was destructive to getting answers,” though she reserved most of her criticism for the Chinese government. Sunny Hostin also pointed out China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, but Goldberg stuck to her point that “he didn’t help the case” with his antics.

Watch above via ABC.