Haines: Trump’s ‘Racist’ Tropes ‘Buried the Message’ COVID-19 Could Have Come from Lab

Sara Haines told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that former President Donald Trump’s “racist terms and dog whistles” buried the message that the coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Whoopi Goldberg said, “The theory that COVID was leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China was downplayed almost from the start. But leading expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says that doesn’t mean it’s not worth investigating further.”

She added, “Sara, do you think that because this pandemic hit in the way that it hit that everybody had an idea of where it came from, but nobody knew for sure, and no one was letting the science roll out to find out? Do you think that might be a reason people had so many different theories?”

Haines said, “I do. I think that’s partially it. I think also there were people that raised concerns early on, a couple of years before, saying that the safety precautions in this particular lab weren’t always followed. When that theory came out, it could have come from a lab. It came out under the former administration. I think the messenger matters. I think during that time when that theory started to be told, it was buried in an administration and a former president who often kind of troped in racist terms and dog whistles. So it buried the message that could have been reasonable, but no one was going to hear it because it came from under Trump’s administration, and the media at that time was used to what he doled out. They were going to push back on that.”

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