According to Sen. Joni Ernst, President Joe Biden, who toward the end of May began pushing for a 90-day redoubled investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, should have been pushing for this a whole lot sooner.
“On day 91, what does the president expect to do?” she said during an interview on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “I certainly wish President Biden and the administration had been pushing on this much sooner.”
She went on to say that Biden needs to be “very heavy-handed if we find out there was a lab leak or the virus was developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” going on to add, “My colleagues and I are very intent in discovering the origins of COVID-19 and stopping funding that had continued to flow through the National Institutes of Health to EcoHealth and Wuhan.”
via Newsmax:
About $600,000 of taxpayer money went to the Chinese institute, said Ernst, and the “NIH continued to grant dollars to EcoHealth Alliance, even though they have refused to answer how that money was being spent at the institute … there are a lot of unanswered questions here. WHO had their opportunity. We need independent investigators.”
Meanwhile, Ernst said she hates to see that the U.S. and China appear to be heading toward a renewed Cold War, but “certainly, we can’t trust Communist China.”
“We have seen that in a very damaging example with the global pandemic,” she then said. “Over 3 million people have lost their lives over something that came out of China, whether it was on purpose or inadvertently. We had a global pandemic. They refused to answer questions, they refused to allow investigators, and they have destroyed evidence. This is very damaging not just to any sort of friendship or alliance that could have been with the U.S. but with many of our partners around the globe.”
She also discussed the ongoing role corporate America has had in China concerning manufacturing and said she’d like to see companies turn away from the communist nation and other countries that abuse their own citizens.
“It’s easy to preach here in the United States, but if they’re getting cheap goods from overseas I guess that’s very unfortunate,” The Iowa Republican stated. “They do need to stand up. They need to put their foot down and let’s focus on America first.”
Rep. Lisa McClain from Michigan has introduced a new bill that pushes for the government intelligence and defense contracts to be given to companies in the U.S. rather than to those in China. Ernst said she hasn’t had an opportunity to read the bill but said it sounds “very worthy of support” from folks on both sides of the aisle.
“I do think that if you’re working in intelligence, if you’re working with the DOD, there should not be connections to communist China, period,” she said.
Ernst also noted that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has done “enough damage.”
“He certainly has been the face of coronavirus and yet has sent a very confusing message to the American people, and that’s very, very unfortunate,” she continued. “We need to follow the science. We know that we’re climbing out of coronavirus. And yet we still see mixed messages coming from Dr. Fauci. It’s very unfortunate.”
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