Pompeo Scolds BBC Reporter Over Question About His Confounding Claims on Coronavirus Origin

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo locked horns with a BBC reporter who asked him a question about his recent, muddled statements on whether he believes the coronavirus was artificially created in a Chinese laboratory.

The dust-up occurred as Pompeo took questions from the media on Wednesday morning, during which, he used much of his time to slam China for their cover-ups and misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic. At one point, he told reporters that “we don’t have certainty about whether [the disease] began in the lab or whether it began someplace else.”

Pompeo’s position on whether Covid-19 came from a lab has been a source of media intrigue ever since an interview he gave to ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Sunday. Pompeo claimed there was “enormous evidence” indicating the virus originated in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, but when reminded that U.S. intelligence has noted the scientific consensus that the disease was not man-made or genetically modified, he said “I have no reason to doubt to that that is accurate.”

BBC correspondent Barbara Plett Usher tried to ask Pompeo about his remarks, and he spoke over her while claiming he has been “consistent” on the matter. Plett Usher made reference to the skepticism surrounding the Wuhan lab theory, and she eventually asked Pompeo “are you basing your assertion on information that all of these parties do not have?”

“Your efforts to spend your whole life trying to drive a little wedge between senior American officials, it’s just, it’s just false,” Pompeo told her. “Every one of those statements is entirely consistent. Every one of them. Lay them down together. There’s no separation.”

Pompeo and President Donald Trump have both advanced claims that the virus came from a Wuhan lab but have not elaborated on their evidence. Dr. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, gave an interview where he threw cold water on the theory that the virus was made in a lab instead of occurring through nature.

“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,” Fauci said. “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

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