See if you can wrap your head around this one: The media instantly dismissed the COVID-19 lab leak theory as a “conspiracy” when President Trump was in office touting it, but now are suddenly parroting this theory as plausible, with President Biden in office. Yet they are still blaming the Trump administration for “politicizing” the intelligence findings.
CNN’s morning news coverage Monday led with recent media reports pointing to evidence that supports the Wuhan lab leak theory as the potential origin of the coronavirus pandemic. The media’s catching up to an intelligence report released by a Trump administration's State Department back in January revealing that researchers from a Wuhan lab were hospitalized in November 2019 for a COVID-like illness, weeks before the supposed first case was found in China.
On New Day, co-host John Berman spoke with one Wall Street Journal reporter who first broke the story, before speaking to CNN analyst and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on the issue.
Berman first played a clip of NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci on May 11, saying he is actually “not convinced” that the virus “developed naturally,” a complete flip flop from the position he took a year ago.
But neither Berman nor Haberman noted Fauci’s mixed messaging, or the media’s role in desperately trying to debunk this theory last year.
Berman noted this new reporting added "more fuel to the debate about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic," acknowledging to Haberman, "Understanding where coronavirus and how the pandemic began matters."
He went on to shirk responsibility for how the media freaked out at the Trump administration being tough on China's lack of transparency and poor handling of the virus outbreak:
A lot of the discussion about the lab leak was clouded early on because there was a suggestion by some that it was somehow a Chinese weapon that caused this. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a lab accident. But we've come a long way from people dismissing this as a conspiracy theory to a lot of people taking this seriously, Maggie.
Instead of taking any responsibility at all for the media politicizing the virus, Haberman actually blamed the Trump administration for the confusion instead:
We have, John. Look, I do think that it's important to remember that part of the issue when this was first being reported on and discussed back a few months after the pandemic had begun, then President Trump and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, both suggested they had seen evidence that this was formed in a lab and they also suggested it was not released on purpose, but they refused to release the evidence showing what it was. So because of that, that made this instantly political. I think this was example 1000 where the Trump administration learned when you burn your own credibility over and over again, people are not immediately going to believe you, especially in an election year. However, that does not mean it's not worth discussing.
Haberman acknowledged that the lack of transparency from the Chinese government has made investigating the origins difficult but "there has been a sort of persistent, albeit relatively quiet focus on whether that was the origin of the virus."
She tried to save face once more, by denying fault for her paper pushing Chinese propaganda from the beginning:
"I do think we're in a different period of this John, but I also think its important to remember because I think its getting reframed in a way that's just not true I don't mean here, but in this broader debate by Trump supporters about what happened when this was originally raised," she claimed.
CNN's pandemic about-face was paid for by sponsors, AT&T, contact them at the Conservatives Fight Back page here.
Read the transcript below. Click "expand" to read more.
CNN New Day
5/24/2021
JOHN BERMAN: Again, this new reporting adds more fuel to the debate about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and it comes after Dr. Fauci said this earlier this month.
[PLAYS CLIP]
POLITIFACT REPORTER: There's ooh a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident it developed naturally?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: No, I'm not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.BERMAN: I want to bring in CNN political analyst and Washington correspondent for "The New York Times," Maggie Haberman. Maggie, so nice to see you this morning. This matters. Understanding where coronavirus and how the pandemic began matters. A lot of the discussion about the lab leak was clouded early on because there was a suggestion by some that it was somehow a Chinese weapon that caused this. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a lab accident. But we've come a long way from people dismissing this as a conspiracy theory to a lot of people taking this seriously, Maggie.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: We have, John. Look, I do think that it's important to remember that part of the issue when this was first being reported on and discussed back a few months after the pandemic had begun, then President Trump and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, both suggested they had seen evidence that this was formed in a lab and they also suggested it was not released on purpose, but they refused to release the evidence showing what it was. So because of that, that made this instantly political. I think this was example 1000 where the Trump administration learned when you burn your own credibility over and over again, people are not immediately going to believe you, especially in an election year. However, that does not mean it's not worth discussing. There has been a sort of persistent, albeit relatively quiet focus on whether that was the origin of the virus, and it is compounded by the fact there have not been clear answers from Chinese officials about it and that investigators trying to find out the origin have been stymied.I do think we're in a different period of this John, but I also think its important to remember because I think its getting reframed in a way that's just not true I don't mean here, but in this broader debate by Trump supporters about what happened when this was originally raised.
BERMAN: I think a lot of people just wants answers at this point, it's important.
HABERMAN: Right, that's right.
