(Rex Features via AP Images)
Back in 2015, when Barack Obama was president, the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, a lab that grew coronaviruses and injected them into
animals. It is quite feasible that the novel coronavirus responsible for the
COVID-19 global pandemic leaked from that lab, and U.S. Intelligence sources
have been saying that the virus came from a Level-4 lab in Wuhan. During his
coronavirus press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump pledged to stop
the funding.
"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
said. "But it was granted quite a while ago. They were granted quite a
substantial amount of money."
He asked the reporter when the grant was given, and she
said the NIH granted it in 2015.
"Who was president, then, I wonder?" Trump
quipped.
Who, indeed? Why none other than Barack Obama.
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.
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-Fla.) 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.
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 Wuhan coronavirus may have originated is a scandal.
