Tucker Carlson: From Its Very First Days This Pandemic Was Shrouded in Lies
During an appearance on Tuesday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson criticized the immediate response to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, especially from communist Mainland China.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: It’s one of the deepest paradoxes of the moment we’re living in. All of a sudden, nobody believes anything and yet nobody is allowed to ask questions about anything.
So in a moment like this, it’s worth reminding ourselves that skepticism is the essence of science. Scientists challenge every assumption. They test every hypothesis. Scientists believe nothing until they can prove it.
The scientific method doesn’t just encourage relentless questioning of everything, it requires that. Scientists who simply believe what they’re told aren’t scientists at all, they are dangerous posers. Suddenly, we have a lot of those in this country.
For months, as a strange new disease brought the American way of life to a halt, our scientific establishment ignored the most basic question of all. Where did this illness come from?
To this day, we still don’t really know the answer to that. In place of verifiable facts, our leaders accepted the story they’ve been handed by propagandists within the Chinese government. The virus came from the food market in the industrial city of Wuhan, where somehow it jumped from an animal, possibly a bat to human beings. That’s what the Chinese government told our leaders. That’s what our leaders told us.
There was never any proof that it was true. There was quite a bit of evidence that it wasn’t true. But under pressure from their Chinese donors, international health organizations endorsed that explanation. They called the new virus COVID, short for coronavirus disease. They wanted the most generic possible name for it. They wanted to obscure any relationship between this new virus and the Chinese government.
From its very first days, in other words, this pandemic was shrouded in lies. Within China where it began, scientists who asked too many questions were swiftly punished. Some appear to have been killed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): As China now tries to rewrite history and claim it was transparent all along, a final nail in the coffin of their lie.
Just two weeks ago, the head of emergency at Wuhan’s Central Hospital, Dr. Ai Fen also went public, saying authorities had stopped her and her colleagues from warning the world. She has now disappeared, whereabouts unknown.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Sad. In the United States in 2020, we have to play tape from an Australian news organization to get closer to what’s really happening in the world.
In just a few minutes, we’ll try to get even closer. We’re going to speak to a Chinese virologist. Her name is Li-Meng Yan. She was one of the very first people in the world to study this new coronavirus early in the outbreak.
What she found as she studied it shocked her and she did not stay quiet about it. And for that reason, in late April, she was forced to flee China in fear for her life. Soon she will publish evidence showing this virus did not originate in a so-called wet market. It came instead from a laboratory in Wuhan.
The Chinese government does not want you to know that, neither does the American left.
Just today, this afternoon, Twitter suspended Li-Meng Yan’s account, presumably at the request of the Chinese government. Twitter won’t confirm that to us. They refused comment when we asked them about it about an hour ago.
But Li-Meng Yan is a problem for the left in this country that’s why they’re trying to shut her down. She is living testament to the fact that everything progressive’s claim that America is — genocidal, totalitarian, systemically racist, and environmentally destructive, China actually is. Their ally is everything they claim we are.
Back in February, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was one of the few American politicians who refused to believe what the Chinese government said. He didn’t take it at face value. And then he did something that no expert here had thought to do. He looked at what specialists call a map, and he noticed something interesting on that map.
He knows that the Wuhan wet market where we were told that the coronavirus originated was very close to a well-known Chinese laboratory that worked on exotic virus research. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Here’s what we do know. This virus did not originate in the Wuhan animal market. Just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level four super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.
Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “We need to at least ask the question,” Senator Cotton said. “What” exclaimed our media stooges, “No questions allowed.” The Chinese have spoken. Listen to them. Anyone who questions the Chinese government is by definition deranged.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Tom Cotton, a couple of days ago, spouting a conspiracy theory that the Chinese made this virus up. Trying to spool up some of the — whoever was wearing tinfoil hats in your audience.
DON CALLOWAY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Let’s apply Occam’s razor and just call it crazy, crazy. This is crazy. This is an insane thing to do. This is just wildly irresponsible and was totally unnecessary.
I don’t know what Tom Cotton gets out of this.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: In the 1980s, I remember when the far left trafficked in rumors about HIV had been invented in C.I.A. labs. The far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s ominous when you think about it. Why are these people, all of them with college degrees in high paying jobs, sucking up to the fascist government of China, because on some level, they believe China will win in the end and they’re trying to get in good with their new leaders. Scary.
CNN and MSNBC were sending a very clear message to Tom Cotton and anyone like him who would dare question the official line. If you keep asking questions, we’ll attack you as mentally ill and we will lie as we do it, as they always do.
They knew that Tom Cotton never claimed the virus was invented in a laboratory. He asked if it originated there, and it’s not a crazy question. Maybe an animal transmitted it to researchers and the Chinese government didn’t quarantine those researchers.
That’s an entirely reasonable possibility, as reasonable as any other explanation. But to the news networks in this country, those were the ravings of a mental patient.
So as you can imagine, it was a little awkward when in March, a flak for the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the United States of inventing the coronavirus quote, “It might be U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent. Make public your data. The U.S. owes us an explanation.”
The spokesman who brazenly said that Zhao Lijian went on to argue that anyone who suggests the virus had anything to do with China is quote, “extremely irresponsible.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZHAO LIJIAN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE CHINESE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS INFORMATION DEPARTMENT (through translator): Certain media say this coronavirus is the China virus. This is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that. We are still tracing the origin of the virus and there is no conclusion yet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, we have no idea. Nothing to do with China. So ask yourself as you watch that, is that how innocent people talk? No, it’s not. That’s how guilty people try to wipe away their crimes.
But our media class didn’t see a problem with it at all. They bought it completely and more to the point, they understood their marching orders. So before long, they were arguing that the Chinese Communist Party, a group that puts minority populations in concentration camps was actually the victim of racism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The President referred to the coronavirus as a quote, “foreign virus.” I think it’s going to smack — it’s going to come across to a lot of Americans as smacking of xenophobia.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Xenophobic wartime Trump, where he thinks the only path now is to basically declare the virus public enemy number one, to paint it in somewhat racist terms.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, MOVEON.ORG, CHIEF PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: The xenophobia and the racism and outbreak is such a common thing and it is incredibly dangerous. It is problematic and it is scary, and I just really want to call that out.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus? Why do you keep using this? A lot of people say it is racist.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is not racist at all. No, not at all. It comes from China. That’s why.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Really? Of all the outrages committed by our media class in the last four years that may be the one that lives the longest and that causes the most shame. That is essentially betraying your country right there. Not asking questions on purpose, attacking anybody who ask entirely legitimate questions as a racist. Yes.
So there’s a reason CNN published a piece in January entitled “Coronavirus Taskforce Another Example of Trump Administration’s Lack of Diversity.” It is the same reason that Joe Biden campaign called Donald Trump xenophobic after he announced the China travel ban in response to the virus.
It’s the same reason that totally discredited outlets like Vox and “The New York Times” echoed that attack. Race is so effective a political weapon that progressives now use it to defend actual racists who oppress their own people.
Meanwhile, as always, the liars kept lying. In April, taxpayer-funded National Public Radio boasted that it had interviewed quote, “half a dozen scientists familiar with lab accidents and how research on coronavirus is conducted” and concluded quote, “There is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as a result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else.”
Oh, there’s no chance. I’m driving to work in a car, oh, there is no chance. Okay. Tom Cotton must be a mental patient. Strangely, NPR forgot to mention the two releases of the SARS virus from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing that were attributed to negligence. Oh no chance. It never happens.
They also mostly ignored a 2018 U.S. State Department report that concluded China’s Wuhan laboratory, the laboratory in question has, quote, “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory.” Yes, no chance. Ignore the data. Otherwise, you are a racist.
But over time, this ruse has become harder to maintain. As far back as March, there were signs the lies couldn’t extend all the way to Election Day, which is always the point. Increasingly, disease experts were noticing that many of the early coronavirus patients in Wuhan had no connection whatsoever to the wet markets. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: From the very beginning throughout December it was spreading and we now know it was spreading human to human. But the official line of the Chinese government was that this was all related to an animal market and once they closed the market, it would all go away.
QUESTION: Did they know differently at that time?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely. Because they were seeing cases coming into the hospitals that had nothing whatsoever to do with that animal market.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It had nothing whatsoever to do with the animal market. Oh, okay. No chance. Right. The Associated Press meantime found that top Chinese officials knew they were facing a pandemic in Wuhan for nearly a week in January, but didn’t tell anyone.
Instead, the Chinese government hosted a banquet for tens of thousands of people. Millions streamed in for Lunar New Year celebrations, and then millions streamed out of Wuhan and many of them spread all around the world and brought the virus with them.
For the partisans who wanted to absolve China and blame the United States for the pandemic as they blame the United States for everything, this was all bad news. Better ignore it.
For everyone else, people who care about the truth, these were important developments worth learning about because we don’t want another pandemic, if we can prevent it. Science is the only answer. Subverting science will make it much more likely that we get sick again.
But even now, months later, we’re only beginning to fully understand the levels of economic and cultural damage that this virus from China did to this country and to the world and we’re only just beginning to understand the extent to which our own politicians and our media class were complicit in that.
The only way to get to the truth, as always, is to keep asking questions, no matter what they say and we’re going to do that again right now.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor