Bill Hagerty, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, called China’s role in concealing the Wuhan Virus “the greatest cover-up in human history.”
Hagerty said this while appearing on FOX Business.
“What the Chinese have done is atrocious. They destroyed samples. They silenced doctors who tried to speak out about it, and they put their public relations campaign ahead of the public health of their own citizens. And when they lost control of the virus they even turned on the Chinese propaganda machine, their communist regime’s propaganda machine, to suggest the U.S. government was responsible for this,” Hagerty told host Lou Dobbs on Thursday.
“It’s been an enormously costly cover-up. It has now cost over 94,000 lives worldwide. Just here in America, 16,000 lives have been lost and still counting. Over 17 million jobs and approximately $5 trillion worth of economic damage. Lou, that is why I call this the crime of the century.”
Crime of the Century: @BillHagertyTN calls China’s cover-up of the Wuhan Virus the greatest in human history, saying it will ultimately cost millions of American jobs & thousands of lives. #AmericaFirst #KAG2020 #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/NVV3szoUgn
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) April 9, 2020
Hagerty went on to say transparency on the part of the Chinese government “would have made a tremendous difference.” As a result, China caused the loss of 17 million U.S. jobs and put the world economy at risk.
Dobbs asked Hagerty about cutting off funding for the World Health Organization.
“I think this is one of the reasons the president has endorsed me for the U.S. Senate. He knows that I will stand with him, and I will stand as a strong voice in the United States Senate to protect American taxpayer dollars and to see that those taxpayer dollars are used to the benefit of America. The WHO is clearly, closely aligned with China,” Hagerty said.
“One of my friends is the deputy prime minister of Japan, Taro Aso, who used to be the prime minister of Japan, even calls the WHO the CHO to underscore the Chinese influence on that health organization. I look forward to bringing that organization to account. They need to be held accountable for this. Their complicity in this caused a delay. They even repeated Chinse propaganda, as you recall. They said that it wasn’t transmitted human-to-human. The WHO didn’t do their job.”
Hagerty went on to call China “the greatest strategic threat that we confront today.”
The senator candidate also told Dobbs that he expects changes in the corporate world because of China’s cover-up.
“I can’t imagine any American company wanting to do business with China,” he said. “I think what this will do is accelerate the movement of the supply chain from China back home to the United States. I look forward to that.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bill Hagerty” by Lou Dobbs.
If we want to effectively fight against coronavirus, we don’t do it by resorting to racist xenophobia against the Chinese.