For weeks now, President Donald Trump has been making the case that the coronavirus originated not in nature but in a lab in Wuhan, China. He said late last week that he had a “high degree of confidence” that was what happened (although he didn’t specify why he felt that way) and on Sunday night in a Fox town hall offered cryptically “something happened.”
Now, before we play the game of “he said, he said” remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it’s not Donald Trump.
In short, Fauci’s view on the origins of the disease matters a whole lot more than Trump’s opinion about where it came from. Especially because, outside of Trump and his immediate inner circle, most people in a position to know are very, very skeptical of the Trump narrative that the virus came out of a lab — whether accidentally or on purpose.
Like the intelligence community, which in a statement last week via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said this: “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”
And like our intelligence partners in the Five Eyes (the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).
