{"id":545651,"date":"2021-05-29T21:20:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T01:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=545651"},"modified":"2021-05-29T21:20:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T01:20:50","slug":"trump-official-slaps-media-you-were-too-busy-calling-trump-racist-to-report-on-covids-possible-wuhan-lab-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-official-slaps-media-you-were-too-busy-calling-trump-racist-to-report-on-covids-possible-wuhan-lab-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Official Slaps Media: You Were Too Busy Calling Trump Racist To Report On COVID\u2019s Possible Wuhan Lab Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">38<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftrump-official-slaps-media-you-were-too-busy-calling-trump-racist-to-report-on-covids-possible-wuhan-lab-origins%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=545651&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/F3D0BDC6-696D-4B7A-AFD3-72BB53C67A4E-1200x800-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The media ignored a 2020 intelligence community assessment that COVID-19 may have originated in a Chinese laboratory and instead chose to portray the very idea as \u201cracist,\u201d a former intelligence official said Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Ric Grenell, the Trump administration\u2019s acting Director of National Intelligence, incisively deconstructed the media narrative on \u201cCNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta\u201d just after 4 p.m. Eastern on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Grenell noted that the nation\u2019s intelligence communities came together to issue a joint statement on the origins of the coronavirus global pandemic in April 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe entire intelligence community believed either that it was an animal-to-human transmission or the Wuhan lab,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. intelligence community closed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/index.php\/newsroom\/press-releases\/item\/2112-intelligence-community-statement-on-origins-of-covid-19\">statement,<\/a> which is still available on the ODNI website, by pledging \u201cto rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the media ignored the second half of the statement, that the virus potentially originated at a laboratory like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, for nearly a year, Grenell said.<\/p>\n<p>For much of 2020, legacy media outlets called any statement that the novel coronavirus may have spread to the rest of the world from a lab \u201cbaseless,\u201d a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/10-times-the-media-slammed-the-wuhan-lab-origin-theory-as-a-conspiracy\">conspiracy theory<\/a>,\u201d or a racial attack to divert attention from President Trump\u2019s allegedly inadequate response to the pandemic. Those media outlets have now tried to say that \u201cnew\u201d intelligence has made the Wuhan lab story \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/from-impossible-to-credible-how-the-legacy-media-is-desperately-spinning-their-wuhan-lab-flip-flop\">suddenly<\/a>\u201d credible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have to be clear, there has been no intelligence released that contradicts or adds to the last statement from 2020,\u201d Grenell said. \u201cNothing has changed except for the media newsrooms suddenly now are charged up about something that they should have been charged up [about] in April 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Instead, \u201cthe entire D.C. political establishment and media newsrooms all focused on this as a racist comment towards China,\u201d he said. \u201cThe narrative was more of a racist tone towards China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Acosta asked him, \u201cWhat do you mean, Ric, when you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grenell replied, \u201cWe have a thing called the German measles, but nobody says, \u2018Hey, if you say the German measles, it\u2019s somehow racist.\u2019 What we mean by that is that it started in Germany. Whether it\u2019s the African flu, or the German measles, or saying that COVID-19 started in China, that\u2019s a very accurate statement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added that \u201cthe intelligence community I was in charge of [was] backgrounding reporters to say, \u2018Hey, this is not political. This started in China.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Acosta, who clashed publicly with President Trump numerous times during his administration, tried to blame the media\u2019s dereliction on the former president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRic, you say we\u2019ve unfairly accused the president of being racist at the time, he did also use the term \u2018Kung Flu,\u2019\u201d Acosta pushed back. \u201cIf he wasn\u2019t being racist in saying these things, why was he saying things like the \u2018Kung Flu\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grenell said the media are free to critique any president\u2019s words, tone, or actions. \u201cAll I\u2019m saying is, if you look at the 2020 statement, it was clear that the intelligence community said that this was China, and yet it was wildly dismissed by our media in Washington and the political establishment,\u201d Grenell said.<\/p>\n<p>Acosta abruptly brought Grenell\u2019s media criticism to an end by interrupting him and saying, \u201cLet me ask you about something substantive here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He then asked if Grenell was optimistic that the People\u2019s Republic of China would be forthcoming about the origins of the virus.<\/p>\n<p>Grenell, a former spokesman to the United Nations, said China had aggressively infiltrated the leadership of U.N. agencies since at least the George W. Bush administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have zero faith the WHO is ever going to do anything but what the Communist Party of China wants it to do,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The media ignored a 2020 intelligence community assessment that COVID-19 may have originated in a Chinese laboratory and instead chose to portray the very idea as \u201cracist,\u201d a former intelligence &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2313514,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/F3D0BDC6-696D-4B7A-AFD3-72BB53C67A4E-1200x800-1.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Trump Official Slaps Media: You Were Too Busy Calling Trump Racist To Report On COVID\u2019s Possible Wuhan Lab Origins","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/F3D0BDC6-696D-4B7A-AFD3-72BB53C67A4E-1200x800-1.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Trump Official Slaps Media: You Were Too Busy Calling Trump Racist To Report On COVID\u2019s Possible Wuhan Lab Origins","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2313514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}