A 4th of July headline from Alice Miranda Ollstein for POLITICO was stunningly honest: "Virus lab leak theory dogs Democrats eager to keep focus on Trump's Covid failings." Democrats are so hellbent and obsessed with the former president no longer in office that they're willing to forsake getting to the truth of how the Wuhan coronavirus came about. It doesn't seem to matter that we can thank the Trump administration for Operation Warp Speed. Or that the virus doesn't care who is president.
Here's one of the earlier paragraphs in the piece:
The dilemma shows how much shaping a narrative of the health crisis ahead of the 2022 midterms is already consuming lawmakers as new outbreaks emerge in parts of the country. And it puts Democrats who control the congressional agenda in a bind, as they wrestle with the possibility of stoking potentially unprovable claims about a man-made crisis or facing accusations from Republicans of engineering a cover-up.
If the theory that the virus is man-made is "potentially unprovable," they haven't been paying attention. And maybe they'd be "facing accusations from Republicans of engineering a cover-up," considering that's exactly what they'd be doing.
Look no further than the Democrats' own words cited in the piece:
“Regardless of how it started, no origin can excuse the lethal recklessness of Donald Trump’s mismanagement of Covid-19. Nothing,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which recently rebuffed calls from its Republican members to hold hearings on the issue. “Presidents have a responsibility to protect public health regardless of the origin of a public health crisis.”
...
“It’s really tough, because whatever is uncovered, it will be used in terrible ways,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “You almost can’t have a legitimate investigation.”
Again, if Trump is no longer in office, then why does his "lethal recklessness of [his] mismanagement" take priority over finding out how the virus started, so that we can prevent it from happening again? In fact, why is it an issue at all?
Any future deaths from any future pandemics aren't going to be on Trump's hands. They could be on Raskin and Jayapal's hands and the committee though, thanks to such refusals and partisan talking points.
Further, it's not a matter of "almost," you indeed "can't have legitimate investigation if you don't have one at all."
The farther down you read, the more maddening such Democratic resistance becomes:
President Joe Biden’s order to the intelligence community in May to redouble efforts to study the virus’ origins has given the issue more currency, though China isn’t cooperating and the administration hasn’t said whether it has uncovered new information. Democrats worry that murky conclusions that don’t identify the origin of the virus could play into the Republicans’ hands, while evidence that might disprove the lab leak theory will trigger more accusations of a cover-up.
What goes unmentioned here is that for all the so-called "redoubl[ed] efforts," the Biden administration canceled an investigation from the Trump State Department, as covered by several of us here at Townhall. This was also a point Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) emphasized when answering Townhall's question at a recent press conference. The question asked about confidence in the Biden administration's response on these investigations, especially when they've doubled down on how the WHO is worth trusting.
Here's more honest revelations from Ollstein:
But Democrats are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid the issue. A Thursday House Appropriations markup of a 2022 spending bill turned rancorous when Republicans tried to withhold funding for the World Health Organization until more information is released about its role investigating a possible lab leak. Earlier in the week, top Republicans invoked the cover-up of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when discussing Covid’s origins and argued for retaliatory measures against China, the WHO and other scientific bodies. House GOP Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has publicly questioned why Speaker Nancy Pelosi “would want to cover up for China” while GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) painted Democrats as “Chinese communist sympathizers.”
The message is resonating with the GOP’s base: A recent Morning Consult poll found that 70 percent of self-identified Republicans believe Covid originated in a lab, compared to just 32 percent of Democrats. Republicans also were twice as likely as Democrats to have heard about the “lab leak” theory.
That’s forcing Democratic lawmakers to engage on the issue, even if it threatens to step on their efforts to keep the spotlight on the Trump administration's response to the virus.
That Morning Consult poll, conducted June 4-7, with 2,200 U.S. adults, showed a plurality, at 46 percent, believed the lab-leak theory, while 26 percent believed it "moved naturally from animals to humans." A whooping 28 percent fall into the "Don't Know/No Opinion" category.
Then there's the Fox News poll from June 19-22 with 1,001 registered voters. Sixty percent of voters believe it was "created in China lab and leaked," while 31 percent say it "evolved from nature in China." As the poll's write-up notes, "That majority is largely comprised of 79 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of independents who blame a lab leak. Forty-one percent of Democrats agree, while 46 percent believe the virus evolved from nature."
The piece closes with another gem from Raskin:
Yet many Democratic lawmakers told POLITICO they remain ambivalent about the need to investigate Covid's source, fearing it will detract from their efforts to focus on the Trump administration's chaotic response. They're also concerned the focus will fuel conspiracy theories and anti-Asian rhetoric that have already proliferated around the possibility of a lab leak.
"I’ve been calling for us to look into this for months," Raskin said. "But it’s obviously far less important than getting shots into arms and getting people tested and getting the truth out about the virus."
Does this man listen to himself? "[G]etting the truth out about the virus" is exactly what an investigation that the Republicans are calling for would do.