Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon accused China of “premeditated murder” in an interview with host Eric Bolling on Sinclair’s United We Stand, basing his incendiary charge on the evidence that its government initially downplayed and concealed the threat of the human-to-human transmissibility of Covid-19 during December and January.

“They’re guilty of hiding this from people throughout the world, just like a biological Chernobyl,” Bannon claimed. “They’ve got to be held accountable.”

Bannon  also pointed out anonymously-sourced news reports that the coronavirus originated — in a mistaken safety breach — from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s top biological research lab. Asked on Thursday in a White House press conference, whether that theory merited consideration, Bannon’s former boss, President Donald Trump, said he had seen evidence to support “high confidence” in that explanation, but refused to go into detail when pressed by a reporter: “I cannot tell you that.” However, Trump did hint that the virus’s spread could’ve been an intentional act, when he said about controlling the outbreak that China “was either unable to or chose not to.”

China’s ruling Communist Party has refused to allow international researchers to visit the Wuhan lab, a fact Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted at a press briefing this week. “We still haven’t gained access, the world hasn’t gained access to the WIV, the virology institute there. We don’t know precisely where this virus originated from,” Pompeo said.

Bannon predicted a steep cost to China if other countries find it culpable of releasing the virus. “If it turns out it came out of a lab, and this was one of their experiments that got loose, and they have direct culpability in that regard, to me, that means they are not a legitimate government,” he said. “I think the reparations to the world are north of $5 trillion. I think it’s going to be $5 to $10 trillion paid over time, and that’s what we know today.”

Watch the video above, via Sinclair Broadcasting.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/3bTIk2L