Trump Thinks He Knows What Started the Pandemic
The lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins has become a principle of MAGA governance.
By Daniel Engber, The Atlantic
The lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins comes in many forms. Here is Donald Trump’s: A scientist in Wuhan walked outside to have lunch, maybe with a girlfriend or something. “That’s how it leaked out in my opinion, and I’ve never changed that opinion,” the president said earlier this month at a press event. Whether something like this really happened was, until this year, a subject of lively debate. These days, it’s being presented as official history. Yes, COVID did come out of a Chinese lab, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters shortly after Trump’s inauguration. “We now know that to be the confirmable truth.”
