Lindsey Graham: Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Dismissal Cost Trump 2020 Election
Leading up to the 2020 election, the media’s unbalanced coverage of former President Donald Trump may have very well lost him a second term.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina believes this to be the case, due to one very specific example.
If the media had not dismissed the former president’s assertion that there was a good possibility the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan, which multiple reports now point toward being quite likely, Donald Trump may very well have won the 2020 election.
In an Op-Ed published by Fox News on Thursday, Graham asserted as much.
Likening it to the since-discredited Steele dossier — which was the basis for claims that Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election — Graham asserted that American scientists were also likely “putting an outcome first — facts be damned.”
The senator quoted a Feb. 19, 2020, letter signed by a group of 27 acclaimed scientists in The Lancet, wherein they spoke out against Trump’s so-called “conspiracy theory” regarding COVID’s origins.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” they wrote.
“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.”
“We want you, the science and health professionals of China, to know that we stand with you in your fight against this virus.”
One of the leaders in charge of coordinating the letter, Graham pointed out, closely collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the very organization we now have reason to believe could have developed the virus.
The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, confirmed in a March interview that many members of the scientific community were hostile toward anyone who believed the virus may have originated in a lab.
Redfield himself claims to have received death threats from scientists for acknowledging the disease could have been manufactured.
“There is no doubt in my mind the combination of prominent scientists coming out strongly against the lab leak theory, along with officials from the State Department shutting down additional inquiries, ended up being two of the most consequential events in the 2020 election cycle,” Graham wrote.
“Their early and near-total dismissal of the lab leak theory played a prominent role in the defeat of President Trump in the 2020 presidential race.”
“Why would they do this — to avoid any accountability that they may have had regarding Wuhan lab research or leaks? Additionally, were there concerns they did not want to prove President Trump’s statement to be true that the origin of COVID-19 was a Wuhan lab leak? Had they given credence to this charge, the whole tenor, tone and focus of the 2020 election would have turned on a dime.”
If voters had known that COVID-19 may have come about from a Chinese lab leak, it is likely that many more would have been asking themselves who was more likely to stand up to China, Graham pointed out.
The answer to that question is obviously Donald Trump.
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