Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher said on Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech’s Fox News podcast Monday he’s concerned the Democrats’ fear of Chinese confrontation would impede substantive efforts to investigate the origin of the novel Wuhan coronavirus.
While Trump Derangement Syndrome and an incompetent media apparatus gave China an 18-month head start to cover up suspicions of a lab leak from Wuhan, Gallagher said, “there’s this sort of broader fear that I’m detecting on the left of provoking a confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party.”
“I don’t know if there’s a financial incentive behind that or just a, ‘Hey we don’t want to wind up in a World War III,’ thing behind that,” Gallagher added. “At the same time we’re getting very good at constantly bashing America and broadcasting to the world what an evil racist hellscape of a country this is. There’s reticence to criticize the Chinese Community Party which by the way, is perpetuating a genocide right now.”
Gallagher, a three-term congressman, has been one of the most vocal members of the lower chamber raising concern over COVID-19’s origin as a potential product borne out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in the Hubei Province. The idea the coronavirus may have emerged from the lab picked up steam among the political establishment, which had previously dispelled it as a fringe right-wing conspiracy, after the Wall Street Journal published the tales of three researchers who sought hospital care with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, weeks preceding the pandemic’s first outbreak in the same location.
New reporting has also exposed the potential role American tax-dollars had in producing the viral outbreak at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s direction leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Last month, Gallagher demanded the NIAID’s umbrella organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide full transparency about its funding to the Wuhan lab, where researchers studying bat coronaviruses which could potentially infect humans operated with a five-year annual $600,000 grant.
Dr. Fauci is not being forthcoming about the US government’s support for controversial research in Wuhan. Here's why. @RandPaul @RogerMarshallMD @SteveHiltonx pic.twitter.com/nMlq9mw7SC
— Rep. Gallagher Press Office (@RepGallagher) May 12, 2021
Gallagher reiterated his demands for government transparency in Monday’s interview, calling for declassification of all records related to investigations of the outbreak’s origin along with an independent commission to coincide with the Biden administration’s 90-day intelligence review.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Gallagher told Domenech, that a congressional commission to investigate the origin of COVID-19 will move forward before emphasizing Democrat fear of Chinese confrontation could hamper the effort.
I’m sensing that we’re going to hit this big roadblock, which is the concern within a wing of the Biden administration and on the left about provoking the Chinese Communist Party whether it’s because they want to get a big deal on climate change or whether it’s because all of their donors on Wall Street are making tons of money off China… I don’t fully understand it, but that’s what could prevent this from moving forward.
Listen to the full interview here.
