WH will not return Trump’s call for China to pay for COVID fixes

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WASHINGTON White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that President Biden does not support former President Donald Trump’s call for China to pay more than $ 10 trillion in COVID-19 repairs.

“Our position hasn’t changed,” Psaki told The Post in his daily press briefing.

When pressed on whether Biden was “open” to the idea, Psaki cut the line of questioning and said, “Do you have any other questions?”

Trump said China should pay the US for allowing COVID-19 to spread from the original outbreak site to Wuhan.

“China and the China virus they have to pay reparations. We have been badly damaged in terms of death, human life,” Trump said in a recent taped statement for a rally in Wisconsin, adding that “if they paid us $ 10 trillion it wouldn’t be covered.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden does not support former President Donald Trump’s call for China to pay U.S. reparations for COVID-19.Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP

In a speech to Republican Party members in North Carolina, Trump expanded on the idea, saying the reparations push should be an international effort.

“The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from China’s Communist Party. We must declare within a unified voice that China must pay,” Trump said.

Trump said the U.S. should work with allies “to present to China a bill for a minimum of $ 10 trillion to compensate for the damage they have caused. And that is a very low number. The damage is far, far greater than this. ”

He added that “as a first step, all countries should jointly cancel any debt they should pay to China in return for payments.”

Former President Donald Trump recently said that China should pay at least $ 10 trillion in reparations for the virus. AP Photo / Ross D. Franklin, File

More than 614,000 American deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.

Chinahas denied requests for transparency in early COVID-19 data. In a CBNC interview on Wednesday, Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro said the outbreak may have started in September 2019 in Wuhan before information about the novel virus was shared publicly in December.

After the World Health Organization initially refused to investigate the origins of COVID-19, Biden in May ordered U.S. spy agencies to conduct a 90-day investigation into whether the virus had escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Some believe that the COVID-19 virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP via

In a statement, Biden said the two U.S. spyagencies leaned on a theory that thevirus naturally emerged from animals. A U.S. spy agency has relied on lab-release theory.

The White House accepted the spy-agency review after the Wall Street Journal reported that three workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized in November 2019 prior to the public disclosure of the outbreak.

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