Trump Making Tougher Statements on China. Cui Bono?

May 1, 2020 (EIRNS)—At 11:27 A.M. today, President Trump tweeted: “Concast (@NBCNews) and Fake News @CNN are going out of their way to say GREAT things about China. They are Chinese puppets who want to do business there. They use USA airwaves to help China. The Enemy of the People!”

On Thursday, Trump was asked a question at the White House by a reporter who used language reminiscent of the bogus intelligence community assessment of Jan 2017 about Russiagate: “Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?” He responded:

“Yes, I have. Yes, I have. And I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.... They shouldn’t be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes, especially mistakes that are causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die.”

When asked about whether China could have done more to control the outbreak, Trump referred to the canard that China had stopped domestic travel while allowing international flights to depart. While it has been proven that this is false, and that no international flights left from Wuhan after the city was locked down, there were still international flights from other cities in China, and domestic flights between unaffected cities. Even after the travel restrictions were implemented, American citizens and permanent residents continued to fly to the U.S. with their families on repatriation flights.

However, when reporters badgered the President to fault Xi personally, Trump refused to take the bait.