Vanity Fair cites Newsmax for raising US funding of Wuhan lab in 2020

One of the best recent articles about the origins of the novel coronavirus and its likely origins from a Wuhan Institute of Virology biolab appeared in a well-known liberal publication, Vanity Fair, by investigative journalist Katherine Eban.

Eban does a good job at describing efforts in 2020 to shut down any discussion of extensive evidence that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab where dangerous gain-of function research was being conducted to make these types of viruses more contagious.

Unfortunately, Eban could not bring herself to admit that the massive censorship of the virus origins by the press and big tech was part of the American Left’s campaign to defeat President Trump’s reelection by ensuring that blame for the virus in the U.S. fell on Trump and not China. Eban instead makes the ridiculous claim that honest debate about the virus was not possible because of Trump’s racism and xenophobia.

Eban refused to state obvious: that Trump was right about the virus originating in the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government’s responsibility for it becoming a dangerous worldwide pandemic.

Eban also was forced to admit that a Newsmax reporter asked President Trump a crucial question about U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab at an April 2020 White House press conference when she wrote:

“As the pandemic raged, the collaboration between EcoHealth Alliance and the WIV wound up in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. At a White House COVID-19 press briefing on April 17, 2020, a reporter from the conspiratorial right-wing media outlet Newsmax asked Trump a factually inaccurate question about a $3.7 million NIH grant to a level-four lab in China. ‘Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?’ the reporter asked.

Trump responded, ‘We will end that grant very quickly,’ adding, ‘Who was president then, I wonder.'”

A week later, an NIH official notified Daszak in writing that his grant had been terminated. The order had come from the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci later testified before a congressional committee. The decision fueled a firestorm: 81 Nobel Laureates in science denounced the decision in an open letter to Trump health officials, and 60 Minutes ran a segment focused on the Trump administration’s shortsighted politicization of science.”

Putting aside Eban’s childish swipe at Newsmax, Eban misrepresented this question which was asked by Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson. Her actual question about U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab was:

“The NIH under the Obama administration in 2015 gave that lab [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] $3.7 million in a grant. Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?”

We now know from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recently released emails that the National Institute of Health sent $3.4 million to the Wuhan lab from 2014 to 2019. This proves Robinson’s question was on target and not “factually inaccurate.”

It is a shame that due to Katherine Eban’s partisan bias and Trump hatred, she was incapable of admitting this. Robinson deserves a great deal of credit for being ahead of everyone in 2020 on this issue.

But more important, despite her dislike of Newsmax, Eban was forced to admit that Robinson’s question probably led President Trump to cancel U.S. funding of the Wuhan biolab.

Congratulations to Emerald Robinson and Newsmax Media for their honest reporting about the coronavirus pandemic and for countering determined efforts by the mainstream media to shut down discussion of the Chinese’s government’s responsibility for unleashing this deadly virus on the world.