CNN Host Pleads: Stop Blaming China for the Coronavirus!

In a monologue on Sunday, CNN host Fareed Zakaria spent five minutes teeing off on President Donald Trump, accusing him of using China as a scapegoat for his own inaction in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Zakaria, while acknowledging that China and their partners in the World Health Organization engaged in a coverup during the early days of the outbreak, said it accomplished nothing for the president to blame the CCP for this fatal decision. Instead, he said, Trump should be working hand-in-hand with China to find a way out of the crisis.

Because, you know, when a country has lied time and again, the best course of action is to trust them with a partnership!

“To deflect blame from himself, President Trump has decided to bash China,” Zakaria said. “This compounds one bad policy with another. Whatever China’s mistakes, missteps and deceptions, the fastest way to defeat this pandemic would be to build a broad international alliance, to pool resources, share information, and coordinate actions.

“Right now, Washington is doing the opposite, restricting trade in key supplies, allegedly outbidding other countries for shipments of PPE and acting without even consulting its closest allies,” he continued. “China, meanwhile, has tried to scrub its own record by floating a conspiracy theory that the U.S. military created the outbreak in Wuhan. It has also tried to do undeniably good things like lending expertise to countries around the world and sending supplies to hard hit places such as Iran, Italy, Spain and the United States.”

Zakaria could have used that digression to admit that the U.S. has also done good work during the pandemic, but that might mean offering praise to President Trump. And that’s something you just can’t do on the CNN airwaves. You can praise Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, or any other brutal dictator you can think of, but never, ever Donald Trump. Never.

“During the Cold War, when the United States and the soviet union were mortal rivals, they still cooperated on a campaign to vaccinate the world and eradicate smallpox. Now, we are in the middle of a global pandemic, and the U.S. and China, the world’s two leading powers, are trading insults and one-upping each other in a childish blame game that will not save one human life anywhere,” lamented Zakaria.

Fareed’s monologue would make more sense if Trump was actually bashing China at every turn. He isn’t. Indeed, as far as criticism of China goes, Trump has gone remarkably easy on them. And he’s doing that for the very reason that Zakaria points out; we have to work with China, get our medication from them, and all the rest of it. The day will come for a reckoning, but first we have to deal with the immediate threat. Zakaria is up on his high horse, criticizing Trump for things that he’s not even doing.

Well, it’s CNN. What more can you expect?