Mike Pompeo Calls Coronavirus Naturally Occurring Manmade Bioweapon Released Accidentally On Purpose. AOT,K!
If nothing is true, then nothing is a lie!
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo peeked his little head out from between the Fuhrer's butt cheeks yesterday for a little face time with ABC's Martha Raddatz. And while he managed not to lose his shit and start screaming curses this time, he did wind up backed into a corner insisting that two diametrically opposed things were both true, because RACISM. In the secretary's defense, Raddatz tricked him by asking him to reconcile President Trump's lunatic rantings with actual facts. Which is no fair!
See, the Trump campaign has recently decided to throw caution to the wind and go Full Yellow Peril . And although Trump is the one who invited Xi Jinping to his house for chocolate cake and actually praised China for doing such a bang up job containing the virus, the current story line is that China is our mortal enemy and Joe Biden is secretly smelling Xi's hair, or ... well, they're still working the kinks out.
The point is Donald Trump is very hot to fan the flames of conspiracy about China deliberately creatingcoronavirus as a bioweapon to be released on the world, which means that the "heat seeking missile for Trump's ass" who runs the State Department must dutifully parrot this nonsense as if it's true. Even though, itpretty clearly isn't .
Raddatz started off by playing Pompeo this clip of Trump claiming secret evidence he just can't share that China created the COVID-19 virus on purpose.
Trump claims he has seen evidence that #coronavirus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China - but is “not allo… https: //t.co/CC0jPmzQfK
— Al Jazeera English (@Al Jazeera English) 1588318200.0
REPORTER: Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?
TRUMP: Yes, I have. Yes, I have.
REPORTER: What gives you a high degree of confidence that this originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
TRUMP: I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed to tell you that.
Leave aside that the president can declassify anything he likes at will and has actually leaked secret Israeli intel to Russia's Foreign Minister. He's not allowed to tell you that, so don't even ask!
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) just took the unusual step of trying to stop this nonsense in its tracks by releasing a statement saying, "The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified." Moreover, IRL scientists have splained why it's extraordinarily unlikely that the virus accidentally escaped from Wuhan Institute of Virology. Nevertheless, Pompeo immediately leapt to defend his master's crackpot rantings.
RADDATZ: And, Mr. Secretary, have you seen anything that gives you high confidence that it originated in that Wuhan lab?
POMPEO: Martha, there's enormous evidence that that's where this began. We've said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset, but I think the whole world can see now.
Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories. These are not the first times that we've had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.
Here on Planet Earth, the geographic origin of the virus was never in doubt, and literally no one is arguing that China didn't fuck up royally. But that part about Chinese labs being the source of previous global virus outbreaks is just wholesale fiction.
POMPEO: And so, while the intelligence community continues to do its work, they should continue to do that and verify so that we are certain. I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.
RADDATZ: Do you believe it was manmade or genetically modified?
POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.
GODDAMMIT, NO EXPERTS THINK IT WAS MANMADE. Tell him, Martha Raddatz!
RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was not manmade or genetically modified.
POMPEO: That's right. I — I — I agree with that. Yes. I've — I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate at this point.
RADDATZ: OK, so just to be clear, you do not think it was manmade or genetically modified?
POMPEO: I've seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they've got it wrong.
Wtf Mike Pompeo?! News: Do you believe corona was man-made? Pompeo: yes it was News: but your office says it was… https://t.co/mX6oVHOO2F
— DanielNewmaη (@DanielNewmaη) 1588612659.0
Oh, slick! Just doggedly insist that two opposite things are BOTH TRUE if you take them in "context." What a master politician! Now pivot to racism, and you're home free.
POMPEO: Martha, you have to put this in context. Here's — here's what's — here's what's important, Martha. Here's what's important. The Chinese communist party had the opportunity to prevent all of the calamity that has befallen the world. And here we find ourselves today — you and I were talking about it. We haven't seen each other physically for a long time. That's true of people all across the world.
This is — this is an enormous crisis created by the fact that the Chinese communist party reverted to form, reverted to the kinds of disinformation, the kinds of concealment that authoritarian regimes do. Had those scientists been operating in America, they would have put this out. There would have been an exchange of ideas and we would have quickly identified the kinds of things that needed to be done in response.
UH HUH.
Sure, President Trump spent two months ignoring his own intel, and then two more months flogging an ineffective anti-malarial drug, forcing the government to spend millions of dollars buying it up and sidelining scientists who urged caution. And yes, okay, we spent the two months when we could have been preparing for the coming pandemic protecting the stock market instead of the health of our citizens. Okay, it's true that the NSA spent weeks pressuring the Intel Community to find some evidence to support the crackpot theory that China created the virus on purpose. And, yes, our supply chain is so disastrously dysfunctional that states are bidding up the price of medical supplies and then placing them under police guard so the federal government doesn't steal them. Plus Republicans have cravenly played up partisan divides, turning public health measures into culture war demands to assemble without masks to own the libs.
But other than all that, it's obvious that Americans would have handled this much better, without "revert[ing] to the kinds of disinformation, the kinds of concealment that authoritarian regimes do." You bet! Thanks to Donald Trump's most excellent leadership, we've suffered just 69,000 American deaths. A flawless victory!
"Thank you, Martha. You have a great day," the secretary concluded. And with that, Mike Pompeo curled up into a ball and retreated into the warmth of the president's ample buttocks, where all the facts are alternative and all statements, however farcical, are justified in support of the Dear Leader.
[ Transcript ]
Follow Liz Dye on Twitter RIGHT HERE!
Please click here to support your Wonkette. And if you're ordering your quarantine goods on Amazon, this is the link to do it.
Ol' Pompous gets a merit badge for "Ability to Twist Self in Knots" to sell people vaporous speculation.
Just smart enough to be dangerous