Former President Donald Trump called for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to pay $10 trillion in reparations for the COVID-19 pandemic Thursday, which he argues they “allowed.”
“The initial World Health Organization Report on the Wuhan Lab was flawed and must be redone, this time by a truly transparent investigation. We were right about the China Virus from the beginning, and now the entire world sees it,” Trump argued. “This is why the Chinese Communist Party should pay $10 Trillion in global reparations for what they allowed to happen, the worst event in world history.”
Coronavirus is estimated to have killed 3.76 million people worldwide. China has long insisted that COVID-19 spread to humans naturally due to low health standards at many Chinese wet markets. While that theory was taken at face value for much of the pandemic, scientists and governments are now beginning to question it more aggressively.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The theory that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has steadily gained momentum in the media and the scientific community, despite medical officials and the media earlier treating the possibility as a conspiracy theory.
President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of the origins of COVID-19, but he has not ordered the U.S. to conduct an outright investigation. The White House instead argues that the World Health Organization (WHO) is the “appropriate body” for such an investigation. The administration has called on China to be more transparent with its data on COVID-19 and allow Western scientists to conduct research on the labs in question.
Trump then took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci. (RELATED: ‘You Have To Be Asleep Not To See That’: Fauci Claims Attacks On Him Are Really ‘Attacks On Science’)
“Even here in the United States, the so-called experts like Dr. Fauci were wrong about the Wuhan Lab and China’s role the entire time. Just think how bad things would have gotten if I followed Dr. Fauci’s advice and never closed down travel from China (and other things)? Dr. Fauci likes to say that he is ‘science,’ when in fact he is merely science fiction!” Trump said.
Evidence suggests Fauci did not, in fact, disagree with Trump’s China travel ban at the time, however.