Maggie Haberman Blames Trump, Pompeo for Media Dismissing Lab Leak Theory
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said in a Tuesday interview with CNN’s John Berman that former President Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, were partially to blame for members of the media discounting the idea that Covid-19 may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said this month he was “not convinced” Covid-19 developed “naturally.” That comment came after a broadly defined media spent the preceding year expressing skepticism that the virus might have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. ”
This matters,” Berman told Haberman in Tuesday’s interview. “Understanding how the coronavirus and the pandemic began matters. A lot of the discussion about the lab leak, I think, was clouded early on because there was a suggestion by some that it was somehow a Chinese weapon that caused this. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a lab accident. But we’ve come a long way from people dismissing this as a conspiracy theory to a lot of people taking this seriously.”
“We have,” Haberman replied. “Look, I do think it’s important to remember that part of the issue back when this was first being reported on and discussed back … when the pandemic had begun, then-President Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, both suggested they had seen evidence this was formed in a lab, and they also suggested it was not released on purpose, but they refused to release the evidence showing what it was. And so because of that, that made this instantly political. It was example 1000 when the Trump administration learned, when you burn your own credibility over and over again, people are not going to believe you, especially in an election year. However, that does not mean it’s not worth discussing.”
Information about a potential connection to the lab began leaking to some in the media early last year — including Fox News’s John Roberts, who in April asked Trump about a theory that the virus began with an intern who was infected and subsequently spread the infection to Wuhan’s wet market. Trump and other administration officials, however, declined to provide on-the-record confirmation of reports related to the lab.
An intelligence report released this month found that three Wuhan lab employees contracted symptoms consistent with Covid-19 in November 2019, months before China began cooperating with world health officials, prompting a renewed examination of the issue.
“There has been a persistent, albeit relatively quiet, focus on whether that was the origin of the virus, and it is compounded by the fact there have not been clear answers from Chinese officials about it, and investigators trying to find out the origin have been stymied,” Haberman added. “So I do think we’re in a different period of this, John, but it’s important to remember it’s been framed in a way that’s not true .. by Trump supporters about what happened when this was originally raised.”
Watch above via CNN.
