Panelists on “The Five” attacked President Joe Biden for seemingly “leaving out” fentanyl and COVID-19 origins in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping Monday during the G20 summit in Indonesia.
“Throughout the three-hour meeting, Biden conveniently leaving out two major issues: fentanyl flowing into the U.S. from China, and where the heck COVID came from. Instead, Biden putting climate change front and center,” co-host Greg Gutfeld said after mocking Biden for discussing climate change and food insecurity with Xi during the Monday meeting. Gutfeld then brought up a New York drug bust where 20,000 rainbow fentanyl pills were seized. (RELATED: ‘A Warning To The Provocateurs’: China Won’t Help US With Drugs, Climate After Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit)
Biden discussed the human rights situation in Xinjiang province, climate change and the war in Ukraine with Xi, according to a White House readout. Based on the meeting minutes and Biden’s remarks afterwards, it is not clear if Biden pressed Xi about the COVID-19 lab leak theory or Chinese-based fentanyl.
China has become a lead exporter of fentanyl and its precursor chemicals, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Did Joe blow it?” Gutfeld asked the panel.
WATCH:
Almost 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15% more than in 2020. The CDC estimated that of the nearly 108,000 deaths, 71,238 were from fentanyl, according to a May 11 release.
One kilogram of fentanyl can reportedly kill up to a half-million people, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“The issue that killed millions of Americans, lost a generation of kids, cost them education, also cost them their futures, lost people their jobs and their livelihoods, and that’s not the first thing you say that your press conference to America after the meeting?” co-host Dana Perino, a former White House press secretary, said. “Now, I hope it came up, because China unleashed a global pandemic on the world, and nobody has held them to account, nobody has seen him for two years, so I think that today, that was a disappointment.”
A report from Republicans on the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” originated via a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that the Chinese government covered it up.
Biden reportedly did not mention fentanyl or COVID-19 during a two-and-a-half hour conversation with Xi in July.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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