Political payoff in blaming China
Trump pushes accusations well beyond evidence
The Trump Administration is making ever-louder pronouncements casting blame on China for the Covid-19 pandemic, aiming to deflect domestic criticism of the President’s own response, tarnish China’s global reputation and give the United States leverage on trade and other aspects of US-China competition.
President Donald Trump has vowed to penalise China for what US officials have increasingly described as a pattern of deceit that denied the world precious time to prepare for the pandemic. The opening salvo isn’t in the form of tariffs or sanctions, but in a one-sided accounting of China’s behaviour designed to damage its international standing.
The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House have all launched public efforts in recent days to lay bare what they say is “clear evidence” China tried to mask the scale of the outbreak and then refused to provide critical access to US and global scientists that could have saved lives.
Yesterday Trump increased his projection for the total US coronavirus death toll to as many as 100,000 — up by 40,000 from what he suggested just a few weeks ago.
“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people,” Trump told a virtual town hall hosted by Fox News. “We shouldn’t lose one person out of this,” he said. “This should have been stopped in China.”
More than 68,900 people have died in the US, the worst affected nation in the world.
The Trump Administration, according to one of its senior officials, is trying to convince the world that China isn’t playing by the same rules as everyone else, and that may be the biggest punishment for an intensely proud emerging superpower.
To that end, the Administration has pushed its China criticism beyond the bounds of established evidence.
Trump and allies repeat and express confidence in an unsubstantiated theory linking the origin of the outbreak to a possible accident at a Chinese virology laboratory.
US officials say they are still exploring the subject and describe the evidence as purely circumstantial. But Trump, aides say, has embraced the notion to further highlight China’s lack of transparency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
told ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, without proof, that there is “enormous evidence” that the virus began in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The institute, run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is about 13km from a market that is considered a possible source for the virus.
It has done groundbreaking research tracing the likely origins of the Sars virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people.
Pompeo said China denied the US and World Health Organisation access to the lab.
But Trump says he has seen information that gives him a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan institute is the origin of the virus. Asked why he has such confidence, Trump said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
Health officials are dubious.
“From our perspective, this remains speculative,” WHO emergencies chief Dr Michael Ryan said.
“But like any evidence-based organisation, we would be very willing to receive any information that purports to the origin of the virus.”
Trump’s ouster of more than a handful of top intelligence officials has given him an additional credibility problem when it comes to the Administration’s pronouncements based on intelligence.
“These purges have already, I fear, politicised the intelligence community’s work in key ways,” said Mike Morell, a former acting CIA director under President Barack Obama.
The focus on China comes as Trump’s own record has faced persistent scrutiny.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump was first briefed by intelligence agencies about the virus on January 23, and again on January 28.
Providing a rare glimpse into one of the most sensitive US government practices, the highly classified presidential daily briefing, McEnany said it was only in that second briefing that Trump was told that the virus was spreading outside China.
Trump, she added, was told that all the deaths were still occurring inside China and that Beijing was not sharing key data.
Days later, Trump moved to severely curtail travel to the US from China.
But reference to the coronavirus was included in at least passing mention in the written version of the intelligence briefing on January 11 and January 14, according to a senior US government official within the intelligence community, who said other officials, including Defence Secretary Mark Esper, were briefed.
Officials emphasised that much of the US Government’s attention during that period was on Iran, after the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani in a January 3 US drone strike and the subsequent downing of a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran.—