America is now the evil empire
The sort of crude smears once made by fascist regimes are now being made by top US government officials:
“I did not say they deliberately did it, but their China virus — let’s go over the facts here, correct me if I’m wrong — the virus was spawned in Wuhan Province, patient zero was in November. The Chinese, behind the shield of the World Health Organization for two months, hid the virus from the world, and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York and around the world to seed that,” Navarro claimed, without offering evidence such travel was directed by the Chinese government.
“They could have kept it in Wuhan, instead, it became a pandemic,” he continued. “So that’s why I say the Chinese did that to Americans and they are responsible now.”
I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to believe that the hateful lies coming out of the Trump administration won’t eventually have consequences. This may be the first time since the Middle Ages that a government blamed a plague on an unpopular minority group.
Fortunately, the reporter interviewing Navarro called him out on his lies:
But given his critiques of China, he was questioned by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos why, during that same period when the virus was spreading from the country, Trump was complimentary of Chinese President Xi Jinping as he continued to negotiate a trade deal.
“It was President Trump who was praising China all through the month of February, and, you know, there’s a lot of evidence that those lost weeks made a difference,” Stephanopoulos said.
And check out Navarro’s reponse:
“First of all, I think it’s great that we have a president that can get along with all world leaders,” Navarro responded. “But number two, there’s no lost weeks. … We were moving on three vectors of attack in February: vaccine development, development of therapeutics like Remdesivir, and the building up and capacity for things like N95 masks.”
LOL. Next time someone brags to me they have a PhD from Harvard I’ll point out that that institution also saw fit to give a PhD to Peter Navarro. To say he’s dumb as a rock would be unkind to the mineral kingdom.
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17. May 2020 at 09:22
So I don’t think Navarro believes for a minute that the administration didn’t blow it. But like every other functionary that is able to survive in this administration for more than a half a minute, he is a man without moral character, willing to defend the indefensible just to further his career/agenda. I don’t think it is any more complicated than that. Of course, nearly half the country voted for Trump, and any reasonable assessment of the man’s private and public life up to that point would have told you the same damn thing ….. One might have hoped for better (but since when does a 70+ year old narcissist change his strips?), but no one should have been surprised.
17. May 2020 at 09:35
“This may be the first time since the Middle Ages that a government blamed a plague on an unpopular minority group.”
I don’t understand this sentence. Chinese outnumber Americans. Though I guess they’re technically a minority of the global population, no nationality isn’t, so the term seems meaningless in that context. If you’re saying he’s blaming *Chinese-Americans*, that seems pretty obviously at odds with the paragraph, in which he’s talking about China, the Chinese government, etc.
17. May 2020 at 10:53
Mark, Yes, I meant a minority of the global population. But I probably should have said “unpopular country”. In any case, we know that Trump also slides over the distinction between foreign countries and members of that ethnic group that happen to be living in America. The “Mexican” judge, the Chinese reporters, the 4 Congresswomen that should go back to their own country. His base is certainly able to understand the dog whistles. In any case, the emotional impact of this bigotry is exactly the same, demonizing the “other”.
17. May 2020 at 12:47
The largest ethnic group in the world by far is now also a minority group, because, buckle up, they are “a minority of the global population”. You can’t make this stuff up anymore.
This shitfest will continue until the elections in fall and beyond. One side will tell its fairytale stories and the other side will tell theirs.
This is really amusing, and unlike some of the media may tell, it is far from clear which side is more stupid and mendacious. Boths sides are really entertaining though, and isn’t that what counts these days.
17. May 2020 at 15:25
I do not sense racial bigotry in Peter Navarro. The “race card” is better not played in any case.
What sort of debate is engendered by accusing Preseident Xi Jinping of “reviling long-nosed dogs”?
17. May 2020 at 15:53
As for the content, Navarro is not so wrong. It is correct that the pandemic could probably have been prevented if the local government had reacted correctly at the time, which was not so difficult since SARS-CoV-1 tests cross-reacted and turned out positive.
The local CCP government must have known relatively early on that it was SARS-CoV-1 or worse. The CCP central government might not be very much to blame here, they might have been as angry about this kind of cover-up as the rest of the world.
The situation is probably different when it comes to hiding the transmission from human to human. The central government was already involved at this point. Navarro is also right that the CCP central government should have stopped the flights much earlier, instead the CCP has threatened every small country that banned flights from CCP China. New idea: From now on let’s call CCP China “Mainland Taiwan” in honor of the work Democratic China has done for the world.
Navarro probably has a weak character, so he is unable to blame himself. Besides, these attacks against CCP China are probably not a bad idea from a domestic perspective.
Unfortunately, from a foreign policy point of view, we will probably never find out what really happened in Wuhan by such means. The CCP won’t react with more transparency and US intelligence in CCP China is not so capable, so without some help they will never find out what happened.
17. May 2020 at 17:08
Christian List,
Navarro in this quote claims deliberate intention by “the Chinese” (not the CCP) to spawn and hide “their” virus and to then “send” people around the world to infect it. I don’t think Navarro is dumb, rather, by that statement he’s a lot more evil than the CCP. Racism, yes, used for great power politics of course. See below.
Scott,
sounds like he’s working on creating a casus belli by claiming intentionality of this crisis. Soon enough we’ll see “slam dunk” evidence and, barring a hot war, demands for reparations. I saw this early on in March, same direction: https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/china-is-legally-responsible-for-covid-19-damage-and-claims-could-be-in-the-trillions/
17. May 2020 at 17:16
Scott,
You are comparing an analog of Richard Nixon , (Donald Trump) with an analog of the Nazi Party (the CCP)
You have lost any sense of perspective and you have Trump Derangement Syndrome)
Trump is obviously the lesser evil.
I would say it’s about 30 percent the fault of our idiot President for not preparing and trusting Xi Jinping and the WTO that there was no human to human transmission of the virus.
The other 70 percent is due to those whoresons in Beijing.
You are too soft when it comes to the CCP. They are absolute monsters. What with their organ harvesting and Uighur concentration camps. Nazi shit.
PS.
And the CCP is not the Chinese People.
17. May 2020 at 18:14
Christian, China banned flights out of Wuhan on January 23. No country banned flights that early. The US still hasn’t banned flights out of New York. And there would have been a massive blowback against China if it really banned flights earlier than that because an effective travel ban would have had to also ban all foreigners from leaving Wuhan, which China did not do.
And it was totally appropriate for China to use its leverage to try to protect its people’s freedom of movement. What else is government for? South Korea retaliated against Japan after Japan banned travel from South Korea with its own reciprocal travel ban, and the EU threatened China with economic consequences for China’s own travel ban on Europe (and now Germany is negotiating exceptions with China for Germans). This is totally appropriate and commonplace behavior.
Jason, the CCP obviously has a worse human rights record on Uighurs, etc., but when it comes to COVID, they are absolutely the lesser evil than Trump. They took decisive action that contained the virus, and they kept their word that the travel ban on Wuhan would be temporary and it ended in April once the virus in Wuhan was contained. On the other hand, Trump has kept his travel ban in place and it seems to be part of a broader agenda to punish China and immigrants now. If the US and Europe had followed the CCP playbook on COVID, we would’ve had a very tough February but the world would probably be back to something approaching normal now.
17. May 2020 at 18:16
Here is one for Dr. Ray Lopez:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-virus-researchers-uncover-evidence-implying-covid-19-was-created-in-a-lab
Interestingly, the Aussies seem much more open-minded about the origins of COVID-19, and more interested in pursuing the truth about those origins, than Americans. I gather certain “good government” ideals and truth-seeking are still relevant in Australia, an earnestness that has disappeared in the US.
In the US, every story is treated as spin. If you are a Trump-hater, then COVID-19 is entirely natural, and could have evolved anywhere, and likely “Southeast Asia,” and the story is not abut the CCP but Trump’s vanity and incompetence.
If you are a Trump-supporter then the CCP is hiding lab fabrication and a leak, and callously allowed Sino-travelers to go overseas.
17. May 2020 at 18:54
Mark,
If the US had followed the CCP playbook, we’d be committing human rights atrocities and sealing peoples doors shut and burning covid patients while they were still alive.
Don’t forget, China commandeered medical supplies bound for many countries, including the US. You wanna blame someone for lack of PPE in hospitals here, blame them.
17. May 2020 at 19:02
> This may be the first time since the Middle Ages that a government blamed a plague on an unpopular minority group.
Scott, you are over-estimate how the difference between modern times and the middle ages. Blaming unpopular ethnic groups for diseases has an unbroken history.
See eg https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/20/world/social-issues-world/history-outbreak-disease/
> Other outbreaks followed this same script. In 1916, a major outbreak of polio in New York City lead misguided doctors and medical vigilantes to blame a host of culprits before settling on Italian immigrants as the cause. New Yorkers desperately avoided Italians, believing that they carried the disease. But polio spread anyway because it had actually infiltrated the larger population by the time the Italians got the blame.
And that’s just what I found after a minute on Google. There’s probably some academic somewhere who was a comprehensive list.
17. May 2020 at 20:07
Jason, yes scott does seem to have a soft corner for CCP and doesn’t believe CCP isn’t a party to this whole spraad. It was evident even when he maintained that the labs were respectable, totally ignoring the “control” aspect of the labs with CCP, which can be qualified with many adjectives – ruthless, efficient, ambitious, etc. respectable isn’t in that list or far down in the fag end.
For those that argue that Trump was mislead by CCP/WHO, WTF? You have a massive security/defense/intelligence apparatus. What did it tell you? In fact, it was your own pick Navarro who seems to have raised a red flag in Jan 2020 that this would cause a massive disruption! If that intelligent apparatus failed, what went wrong?
17. May 2020 at 22:33
FWIW, the security/intelligence apparatus seem to have functioned reasonably well https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed
I also don’t think any China citizen can publish such an article in Chinese press without an invitation to re-education camps. To be schooled and graduate in respectability.
18. May 2020 at 00:04
mbka, I think you’re reading into it by imputing that they deliberately sent people around the world to infect people, rather than merely that they let people get on planes and fly abroad; he seems to be arguing gross negligence. I think people are going a little ‘Pierre Lemieux’ regarding the use of ‘the Chinese’ instead of the CCP. It’s an annoying habit, but when foreign governments are discussed, it’s probably the norm rather than the exception to, e.g., refer to ‘the Russians’, ‘the Germans’, or just Russia or Germany, as opposed to referring to the administration of the party. And it’s absurd even just looking at in the past few years of China’s human rights abuses to argue that the Trump administration is more evil than the Chinese government.
18. May 2020 at 00:39
Mark Z,
gross negligence? By any reading, regardless of other unsavoury things China’s government may or may not be engaging in – they have done an immensely more timely, useful, and competent job in limiting this pandemic than Trump and the US. In fact here in Asia people say, this would not have become a pandemic if the West had done their job, as Asia had done its job at the beginning of the outbreak. Even Asia got reinfected by returnees from Europe and the US. India was. Singapore was. This was under control here in February. Asia was reinfected by the West.
You can do some hairsplitting on initial delays by China of a week, maybe a few weeks. But then they stopped flights, locked down cities and entire regions, shipped around the virus genome as early as January, tested, warned. Not to mention actually managing to stop the outbreak in China, a country of 1.3 billion, as it seems right until now. While Trump kept on saying right into March that the problem doesn’t exist.
And now the US blames China because Trump and Navarro weren’t listening. It doesn’t get any more absurd.
Wait until the travel bubbles between countries grow, eventually in Asia linking in AU and NZ in as well… until they’re including the entire planet.
Except the US.
18. May 2020 at 02:25
MBKA.
How much is the CCP paying you?
I hope it’s worth it.
18. May 2020 at 04:54
Jason,
as most Trump voters or sympathisers, you don’t seem to realize that there is a world outside of the US. This world (95% of the world’s population – the US being just 5%) often thinks radically differently from those who live inside the US bubble. Mind you, even I am affected, I read mostly US and British news sources, so I already have a considerable bias. But at least, being immersed into Singapore culture gives me an outlook into people who, well, think differently.
If I stringed together random facts about the US the way you do with China, I’d come up with something along the lines of, uh, the US probably bombed more civilians to death since WW2 than were ever murdered by the Nazis. And that might even be true. Still, it would be highly misleading in a debate about the generally positive role the US played globally since WW2 and the good it’s been doing in international relations. After all, Scott, I, and a lot of others here, are precisely mourning the death of a benevolent and smart US, and the birth of a selfish and dumb one. It’s not glee, it’s sadness.
18. May 2020 at 06:56
Scott is a mad man when it comes to China—a “minority”? Guess who else hates China? Africa. Victims of a Belt and Road initiative—-which is certainly why 56 African nations joined the Australian led coalition to investigate the Coronavirus. Of course, Australia is led by a Trump like party, as Brazil and U.K. are——-hence worse since Middle Ages. I wouldn’t move to Perth just yet.
US has not joined.
18. May 2020 at 07:18
Minority Wendy Wu of South China Morning Post writes article “ China’s Aggressive Approach to Coronavirus Approach “not working” “. May 17
Wu clearly a Trump mole—-or a Hong Kong anti-China hater.
18. May 2020 at 08:58
Everyone, This comment section has exposed the emotional immaturity of many of my commenters. Get a grip.
Ben, No one said anything about race.
Jason, I never compared Trump to the CCP.
You said:
“China commandeered medical supplies bound for many countries, including the US. You wanna blame someone for lack of PPE in hospitals here, blame them.”
The US government is 100% to blame for any and all medical shortages here. Not 99%, 100% to blame.
Matthias, Read it again, I said a government blamed a foreign country, not a bunch of NYC doctors. I choose my words for a reason.
Anon, Numerous western experts have visited the Wuhan lab and spoke very highly of it. And stop lying about my views.
Mark Z, You said:
“And it’s absurd even just looking at in the past few years of China’s human rights abuses to argue that the Trump administration is more evil than the Chinese government.”
Yeah, that would be absurd.
And the “seeding” charge is just crazy. China announced human to human transmission at the same time they shut down internal travel in China.
Michael,Rulle, Your last two comments are simply childish. Grow up.
18. May 2020 at 09:20
@mbka
By any reading, regardless of other unsavoury things China’s government may or may not be engaging in – they have done an immensely more timely, useful, and competent job in limiting this pandemic than Trump and the US. In fact here in Asia people say, this would not have become a pandemic if the West had done their job, as Asia had done its job at the beginning of the outbreak.
Uh, the people (close family) I know in China say different.
1. The Chinese government systematically lied about and withheld key information about the virus at its outset.
2. There’s significant evidence (which, again, has and is being suppressed by the Chinese government) that suggests their it escaped from a lab.
3. The Chinese government appears to have killed and/or “disappeared” a >0 number of people who attempted to report information about the virus.
4. The overall “success” of the Chinese response seems much like the “success” of most communist endeavors. It’s a success in the same sense that, say, the Battle of Stalingrad was a “success”.
18. May 2020 at 17:13
MikeDC,
the things that you wrote can be simultaneously true with the things that I wrote.
18. May 2020 at 19:07
scott, for the last and final time: Wuhan lab being respectable (the folks that work there with brilliance and integrity and the scientific chops and the processes and infrastructure) vs Wuhan lab being respectable (ability of the folks there to voice their thoughts and opinions and facts and share the same world wide even if they are wrong, without a controlling or shaping the message CCP) are different.
I talk about the second aspect (and the same is applicable to CDC of US or Taiwan or ICMR of India etc. too) which is all about realpolitik.
Thats my last 2 cents. Wish you a not-so-sucky-as-spring summer, Sumner.
19. May 2020 at 13:52
“To say he’s dumb as a rock would be unkind to the mineral kingdom.”
Lol!… I’m going to steal that one.