Donald Trump has ordered China to pay “10 trillion dollars” to the United States (US) for the “death and destruction” caused by the Covid pandemic.
The former US president also blasted Anthony Fauci’s “foolish” funding of the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology amid growing calls for the top doctor to explain how much he knew about work being done at the laboratory.
According to the Daily Mail, Trump said: “Now everyone, even the so-called ‘enemy’, are beginning to say that President Trump was right about the China Virus coming from Wuhan Lab.”
In a statement, he added: “The correspondence between Dr Fauci and China speaks too loudly for anyone to ignore.
“China should pay USD 10 trillion to America, and the world, for the death and destruction they have caused!”
Fauci, 80, has finally acknowledged the “lab leak” Covid theory may have some weight as top Republicans call for him to be ousted after thousands of his emails were leaked.
More than 3,000 pages of Fauci’s emails were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and published this week by Buzzfeed – but Fauci insisted that they were “taken out of context”.
The leading doctor spoke out on Thursday after being blasted by Senator Rand Paul and Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene when his correspondence came to light, while Candace Owens wants him “tried and imprisoned”.
“I have always said, and will say today… I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human,” Fauci said on CNN.
“But I keep an absolutely open mind, that if there may be other origins of that there may be another reason, it could have been a lab leak.”
Paul slammed Fauci over his “lies” about American-funded research in the Wuhan lab where Covid is thought to have originated.
He said Fauci’s emails, recently made public due to a Freedom of Information Act request, show Fauci knew of American funds going to the Chinese lab.
Appearing on Fox News, Paul said the emails showed Fauci could have been responsible for the development of the coronavirus – adding to his accusations a month earlier when he said the same of the National Institutes of Health.
At the Senate hearing at the time, Fauci told Paul he couldn’t be further from the truth.
“You are entirely and completely incorrect. The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute,” Fauci said in May.
Paul’s attacks on Fauci continued this week, with Paul saying Fauci beared a “moral culpability” for the development of Covid at the Wuhan lab that received partial funding from the NIH.
“I think we’ve had a sea change of opinion,” Paul said.
“Everybody left-of-center was saying this was a conspiracy, no way it could have happened in the Wuhan lab.”
“Now even Dr. Fauci is saying we should investigate it,” he continued.
“But the emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci from the very beginning worrying that he had been funding gain of function research.”
He added: “If it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there’s a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding.
“But he was also a big supporter to this day of saying that we can trust the Chinese on this, that we can trust Chinese scientists and I think that’s quite naïve and really should preclude him form the position that he’s in.”
Other emails revealed that Fauci had been told about the lab theory, which he publicly downplayed, and dismissed a warning about China’s Covid “cover-up” because it was “too long” for him to read.
Speaking about the emails, he told NewsNation: “The only trouble is they are really ripe to be taken out of context.
“Someone can snip out a sentence in an email without showing the other emails and say, ‘based on an email from Dr. Fauci, he said such-and-such,’ where you don’t really have the full context.”