Tom Cotton: ‘Too Bad’ Democrats, Health Bureaucrats Called Wuhan Lab Leak Theory ‘Debunked’ for a Year

Monday on FNC’s “Fox News Primetime,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) criticized policymakers, including Democrats and health officials, who were dismissive of the Wuhan lab leak theory.

According to the Arkansas lawmaker, had they been more open to that possibility, understanding the origins of the deadly virus would be further along.

“It’s pretty telling you that the Chinese Communist Party is grasping at such straws that they’re pointing the finger at an American military lab and those military games that happened in China last year,” he said. “This is just about as persuasive as their case that a bat somehow kissed a skunk and must have introduced this virus into human beings.

“Look, from the very beginning, it’s been obvious that the most likely source of this virus is indeed the labs in Wuhan that investigate and research exactly these kinds of viruses,” Cotton continued. “It’s too bad that the Democratic Party and public health bureaucrats and social media labeled that some kind of debunked conspiracy theory for a year. Maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of it if they hadn’t.”

Cotton also suggested National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and other health officials were covering up their “tracks” in downplaying China’s role in the pandemic.

“Well, for all of last year, much of the public health bureaucracy here and around the world was covering for the Chinese Communist Party and their fellow researchers,” Cotton said. “Look, it’s now obvious that the National Institutes of Health and Tony Fauci’s agency within the National Institutes of Health-funded indirectly gain-of-function research in those labs, which is to say, making coronaviruses more contagious and therefore more deadly.”

“That raises a lot of uncomfortable questions,” he added. “That’s why Tony Fauci still thinks that the natural origin theory is the most likely theory because he’s trying to cover up his tracks and trying to avoid answering the questions about why he was funding research that is so risky that even Barack Obama tried to forbid him.”

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