Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy called out the Chinese Communist Party during a Tuesday appearance on “The Story” with Fox News host Martha MacCallum.
Kennedy cited recent reports that gave credence to suspicions that the novel coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan virology lab rather than a local wet market. (RELATED: ‘Four Horsewomen Of The Apocalypse’ — Sen. John Kennedy Rips Squad ‘Whack Jobs’)
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Kennedy began by saying that no one was contesting the fact that coronavirus originated in bats — it was where those bats were located that was in question.
“Martha, we know the COVID-19 Coronavirus came from a bat. We know that because of the genetic composition. We know it also started in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party said it started when a Chinese national ate bat flesh that he bought from a meat market in China, in Wuhan. Just one problem, the meat market didn’t sell bats and there was no evidence the first victim was even close to the wet market, as they call it.”
Kennedy went on to note that there were those who have speculated that the virus actually originated in a lab rather than a wet market.
“We don’t know if that’s true. But the absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence,” Kennedy continued. “American scientists visited this biomedical research lab where they were studying bat coronaviruses and their transmission to humans, and they came back and sent a cable two years ago to the State Department saying this is an accident waiting to happen. If this virus gets out, we are going to have a world pandemic.”
Other scientists who have studied similar viruses warned as early as 2013 that wet markets — especially those where bats were being sold as delicacies — could be breeding grounds for pandemics as well.
“China has some explaining to do,” Kennedy added, making it clear that he meant the leadership and not the people. “The political leadership has a very casual relationship with the truth. They don’t share western values. They will steal the hair off your head. In this case, they refuse to let anybody talk about the origins of the virus. They won’t let any scientists in China publish anything about the virus without permission of the communist party.”
Kennedy also recalled the fact that China had delayed sharing the genetic makeup of the virus and that doctors who had attempted to warn others had disappeared or died of the virus themselves.
“This is not going to be the United States just asking these questions,” Kennedy warned. “It’s going to be the whole world.”