Pompeo: Anger at China ‘Appropriate’ — ‘Very Confident That the Chinese Communist Party Will Pay a Price’ for Coronavirus

As the United States appears to have gotten a grasp of the coronavirus pandemic, some of the focus has shifted to the Chinese government, whose actions are thought to be responsible for the virus’ spread, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “confident” China will pay a price.

During an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Pompeo argued anger at China was justified.

“That’s appropriate that you’re angry,” he said. “I think many of us are angry. I know the president feels the same way. China caused an enormous amount of pain, loss of life and now a huge challenge for the global economy and the American economy as well by not sharing the information they had. Sean, you should know, we still don’t have full transparency from the Chinese Communist Party. I’m so concerned that there are things we don’t know. We don’t know the history. We haven’t been able to get our team on the ground to do the work that it needs to do. This is an ongoing challenge and the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization have failed to do the things they have the responsibility to do. There’s a pandemic inside of the country.”

Pompeo could not offer by precisely what means China would pay a price but said the cost could come in a variety of ways.

“I am very confident that the Chinese Communist Party will pay a price for what they did here certainly from the United States,” Pompeo said. “I don’t know exactly what form that will take. Our focus today isn’t on that. It’s on making sure we keep America safe, take down the health risk, keep people healthy as we can, and get this economy going back. But I’m very confident. I talk to business people all around the country. I talk to ordinary citizens. People who have put their lives at risk over the last weeks. They know that this is a result of this virus that originated in Wuhan, China, and they know that the Chinese government didn’t do the things it needed to do.”

“There will be a cost associated with that,” he continued. “We need to focus on the here and now and there’ll be a time to make sure that we get this right to make sure that we’re not dependent on China for our pharmaceutical goods and all the things that we’ve seen that we just didn’t have right and that President Trump had identified early on as things we needed to fix in the relationship between the United States and China.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor