CREDIBILITY GAP

Trump Claims He Has Evidence Coronavirus Started in Chinese Lab, but You Can’t See It

The intelligence community is reported to be being pressured to find evidence linking the outbreak to Trump’s pet conspiracy theory.

President Trump thinks he has all the answers. He said Thursday that he had seen evidence that gave him a “high degree of confidence” the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, supporting theories repeatedly floated by his White House team and online conspiracy-theory sites. Trump contradicted an on-the-record statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence just hours earlier that stated no such assessment has been made and it continues to “rigorously examine” whether the outbreak “began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” When Trump was asked why he was confident in his assessment, he replied: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Top officials in the Trump administration have reportedly pushed U.S. intelligence agencies to hunt for evidence linking the virus to Chinese labs.