Skeleton Emerges from Obama's Closet: Trump Finds it, Drops Hammer on Live TV
President exposes 2015 Wuhan Lab funding during presser
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President Donald Trump dropped the hammer on the previous administration after revealing on live TV that the White House is investigating reports the Obama admin sent millions of dollars to the Wuhan lab suspected of being linked to the origins of COVID-19.
Details have recently emerged that Barack Obama's National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2015.
The lab conducts experiments with coronaviruses and animals, namely bats, and is coming under increasing suspicion for being the point of origin for COVID-19 before it was unleashed on the public.
Last week, during investigations into the origins of the global pandemic, U.S. officials reportedly uncovered evidence the coronavirus originated in the same Wuhan lab and China's ruling Communist Party blamed wet markets to cover it up.
Fox News reported late on Wednesday officials have revealed that the Chinese government blamed a wet market in Wuhan to deflect blame from the lab and destroyed evidence of the experiments.
COVID-19 originated in a laboratory as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, according to the report.
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Citing "multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government," Fox reveals that the "initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that ‘patient zero’ worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.”
During his coronavirus press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump was asked about the Obama-era funding of the Chinese lab.
"Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?" a reporter asked.
"The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million, I've been hearing about that, and we've instructed that if any grant going to that area — we're looking at it, literally, about an hour ago — and also early in the morning, we will end that grant very quickly," Trump responded.
"But it was granted quite a while ago. They were granted quite a substantial amount of money."
Trump then asked the reporter when the grant was given, and she said it was granted by NIH in 2015.
"Who was president, then, I wonder?" Trump quipped.
"2015? Who was President then, I wonder?"@realDonaldTrump says they'll end a reported $3.5M grant "very quickly" that was given to a lab near Wuhan that the virus is being suspected of leaking out of.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 18, 2020
The grant was reportedly issued in 2015 under @BarackObama. pic.twitter.com/g0eyrPERvx
Last Friday, the conservative-leaning animal rights organization White Coat Waste Project alerted The Washington Examiner to the grant, and intelligence sources began to converge on the Wuhan lab earlier this week.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the most advanced laboratory of its kind on the Chinese mainland, is based a mere twenty miles from the infamous wildlife market which was originally thought to be the location of the transfer of the virus from animals to humans.
The sequencing of the coronavirus genome has traced the virus back to bats found in Yunnan caves, according to PJ Media.
The Wuhan Institute was experimenting on bats from the area already known to be the source of COVID-19.
Naturally, the revelation that American taxpayers bankrolled the lab that may be responsible for the virus caused no little consternation.
"When I learned our government was spending taxpayers' money at China's disgusting wet markets to buy and slaughter cats and dogs for cruel experiments, I helped lead the successful effort to stop it last year," said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said in a statement.
"I'm disgusted now to learn that, for years, the U.S. government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from U.S. authorities."
"It's unnecessary and unacceptable for American taxpayers to fund these institutions, and it has to end now," Gaetz said.
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The White Coat Waste Project praised Trump's decision to cut the Wuhan lab funding.
"We applaud President Donald Trump for taking swift and decisive action to ensure that American taxpayers are not forced to pay for wasteful and treacherous animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology," the project's founder and president, Anthony Bellotti, said in a statement.
"Just one week ago, White Coat Waste Project released a blockbuster exposé, which revealed to the world how the National Institutes of Health had given China’s sloppy, state-run bio-agent laboratory part of a $3.7 million taxpayer-funded grant for dangerous animal experiments on coronavirus-infected bats—experiments that put human lives at risk."
"Thanks to the outstanding leadership of President Trump, Congressman Matt Gaetz, and Senator Martha McNally, this misuse of taxpayer dollars is over," Bellotti added.
Obama's defenders consistently claim his administration had no scandals.
Let's see them try to deny that funding the Wuhan lab where the Chinese coronavirus may have originated is a scandal.
