OPINION:
In an era of fake political scandals, real scandals hide.
Despite zero evidence of then-President Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, a thousand investigations were launched.
Pulitzer Prizes were handed out to the most corrupt and dishonest persecutors. The sleaziest politicians were rewarded with greater power. Kabuki impeachment proceedings were conducted — even as a fearsome, real enemy stalked our country.
In the winter of 2019-20, Democrats in Congress ground the federal government to a halt so they could devote all their efforts to their crazed pursuit of the Great Orange Whale.
They failed to harpoon that fish, but their obsession with a political vendetta allowed a real and fearsome enemy to gain a foothold in America.
This real enemy — the one Democrats in Congress were determined to ignore — cost the world many trillions of dollars. It killed millions of people around the world. It sickened many tens of millions more. It punished all with some kind of misery.
Very soon, real evidence surfaced that pointed to a genuine culprit. A Chinese lab with ties to the military was conducting dangerous experiments on viruses very similar to the deadly one unleashed on the world.
Were the viruses related? Did lab workers accidentally sicken themselves? Did the virus leak from the lab — to the utter devastation of the world? Did something even more sinister occur?
These are all basic questions any honest person would ask.
Yet anyone who did was branded an anti-Asian racist, dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. They were silenced and smeared.
Facebook and other Big Tech companies disappeared a story from the Internet that this newspaper published in January 2020 that raised all these questions, backed by solid reporting.
It was a full-blown cover-up.
Health officials around the world — including America’s own Dr. Anthony Fauci — scrambled to extinguish any questions about the Wuhan lab.
Other newspapers such as USA Today and The Washington Post piled on to assist in the cover-up. That would be the same Washington Post that won a Pulitzer Prize for their fake reporting of the Trump-Russia “collusion” scandal.
Our story, by longtime China reporter Bill Gertz, has been proved 100% accurate. And the questions he first raised in January 2020 have proved particularly prescient.
We still do not know with any certainty that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab — or if the Chinese military purposely unleashed it on the world. Or if the communist Chinese government unleashed it on its own people to get a bunch of sick and elderly people off their welfare books.
But that is just it. Why isn’t everyone asking questions to get to the bottom of this?
Where are Facebook and all the other Big Tech companies who claim to be such responsible global citizens?
Where are The Washington Post and USA Today, who weaponized their reporting to cover up one of the deadliest assaults in human history?
Where is Dr. Fauci? Why was he so desperate to silence questions about the Wuhan lab?
The most obvious explanation is that Facebook, The Washington Post, Dr. Fauci and the Democrats in Congress were all part of a very real conspiracy to shield China from any responsibility because they were still in singular pursuit of their Great Orange Whale.
Any suggestion that China might be at fault would diminish their blinding efforts to blame the whole pandemic on President Donald Trump — in an election year.
• Charles Hurt is opinion editor of The Washington Times.
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