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As a rule, many Republicans realize that reminding the public about Donald Trump’s Covid record doesn’t do their party any favors, but Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado nevertheless gave it a try during a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday:
“You’re right, President Trump was in office when the Covid virus was released from a lab in China, from the Wuhan lab. And he tried to make that very clear that this came from China, and reporters regularly dismissed that.”
While it’s always refreshing to see a GOP lawmaker acknowledge who was actually president in 2020, it’s worth pausing to highlight a few relevant details.
For one thing, the jury’s still out on the “lab leak” theory. For another, as a great many virologists and public health officials can attest, journalists aren’t the only ones who’ve expressed skepticism about the theory.
But just as important was the congresswoman’s claim that Trump, during his last year as president, tried to make “very clear that this came from China.” As Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland seemed eager to remind Boebert, the record is more complicated than that.
It sometimes seems as if the details have slipped down a memory hole, but Trump’s record from early 2020 is awfully tough to defend.
In August 2020, William Saletan put together a timeline of events for Slate, and in hindsight, it’s tough to read the piece without cringing. On Jan. 10, for example, after Trump received a briefing on developments in Wuhan, he told Fox News: “We have a great relationship with China right now, so I don’t want to speak badly of anyone.”
Nearly two weeks later, Trump assured the public that China “is in very good shape” and he was “not at all” concerned about a possible pandemic. When CNBC asked the Republican on Jan. 22, “Do you trust that we’re going to know everything we need to know from China?” Trump responded, “I do. I have a great relationship with President Xi.”
On Jan. 30, he told an audience of supporters, “We’re working very strongly with China on the coronavirus. ... We think we have it very well under control. ... We think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that, I can assure you.”
A week later, Trump turned to Twitter to tell the public that the Chinese president “is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus.” The Republican added, “Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.” When a reporter asked Trump the same day whether China was hiding Covid information, he replied, “No.”
On Feb. 10, again on Fox News, Trump again vouched for Beijing’s transparency.
This is just a sampling; the list of related instances keeps going. The more voices in the U.S. questioned China, its handling of the crisis, and its candor, the more Trump stood up for officials in Beijing.
I can’t be sure why Boebert was eager to bring the former president’s record back to the fore, but she didn’t do Trump any favors.