Pompeo Expands for Trump the Ways China Must ‘Pay’ $9 Trillion for Pandemic Damages

May 20, 2020 (EIRNS)—Mike Pompeo reported a few days ago that he had submitted various proposals to President Donald Trump of how China could be made “to pay” for the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, he told the weekly State Department briefing that China owes the world “as much as around $9 trillion, according to our estimates,” in jobs and lives lost in the United States and globally.

Pompeo said that “the President talked about how we’re going to respond, how he’s beginning to think about responding to the calamity that has befallen the world as a result of the actions of the Chinese Communist Party. I don’t want to get ahead of him in terms of talking about how the administration will respond to that,” but rest assured the U.S. will respond “to these risks that the Chinese Communist Party presents to the United States in an appropriate way.”

That gem followed the maniacal rant against the government of China (representing 1.4 billion people, mind you) with which he began the briefing. “First, basic facts. China’s been ruled by a brutal, authoritarian regime, a communist regime since 1949.... We greatly underestimated the degree to which Beijing is ideologically and politically hostile to free nations. The whole world is waking up to that fact.”

The briefing shut down quickly, however, as State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus whisked him out as soon questions turned to what exactly Pompeo was being investigated for before President Trump fired the Inspector General at Pompeo’s request.