USA: Former US President Donald Trump asserted that evidence supported his initial theory that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory and demanded that Beijing make up for "releasing" and "allowing" the virus to spread throughout the world.
Trump claimed that "the facts are now plain for all to see," citing recent claims made by the FBI and US Department of Energy (DOE) that the virus "most likely" came from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In a Saturday op-ed for the Daily Mail, he attacked the Chinese leadership, claiming that Beijing's "lies and deception killed any opportunity to stop this deadly global catastrophe at the start."
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However, neither the DOE nor the FBI offered any evidence to support their conclusions. Chinese officials retaliated by charging that President Joe Biden's administration had politicized the Covid-19 origin-tracing investigation and was attempting to malign China with unfounded allegations.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), issued a warning on Friday, saying that the issue had become politicized and had become a "political football," making it more challenging to determine where the virus originated.
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Unfazed, Trump argued that China needed to foot the bill for a pandemic that, by some estimates, cost $50 trillion in damages. Nearly 6.9 million deaths worldwide, including 1.1 million in the US, have been attributed to the virus.
It is obvious that the nations of the world are not just owed a massive apology; they are owed massive damages, he wrote, adding that it is likely that the virus originated from a Chinese government lab and may even have been created by Chinese government scientists.
Biden has been "unbelievably weak on China," according to Trump, who speculated that it may be because his family has received millions of dollars from organizations connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
He also criticized Biden for working with traditional media, social media, and public health organizations to stifle debate over the lab-leak theory up until recently.
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Trump wrote, "There must now be a reckoning. "The evil censorship systems in the West, including the United States, must be dismantled and destroyed."