Why Did the US Government Fund Wuhan Virus Lab?

Back in 2015, when Barack Obama was president, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab that grew coronaviruses and injected them into animals. It is quite feasible that the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 global pandemic leaked from that lab, and U.S. Intelligence sources have been saying that the virus came from a Level-4 lab in Wuhan. During his coronavirus press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump pledged to stop the funding.

“Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?” a reporter asked.

“The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million, I’ve been hearing about that, and we’ve instructed that if any grant going to that area — we’re looking at it, literally, about an hour ago — and also early in the morning, we will end that grant very quickly,” Trump said. “But it was granted quite a while ago. They were granted quite a substantial amount of money.”

He asked the reporter when the grant was given, and she said the NIH granted it in 2015.

“Who was president, then, I wonder?” Trump quipped.

Who, indeed? Why none other than Barack Obama.

Last Friday, the conservative-leaning animal rights organization White Coat Waste Project alerted The Washington Examiner to the grant, and intelligence sources began to converge on the Wuhan lab earlier this week.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the most advanced laboratory of its kind on the Chinese mainland, is based a mere twenty miles from the infamous wildlife market which was originally thought to be the location of the transfer of the virus from animals to humans. The sequencing of the coronavirus genome has traced the virus back to bats found in Yunnan caves. The Wuhan Institute was experimenting on bats from the area already known to be the source of COVID-19.

Naturally, the revelation that American taxpayers bankrolled the lab that may be responsible for the virus caused no little consternation.

“When I learned our government was spending taxpayers’ money at China’s disgusting wet markets to buy and slaughter cats and dogs for cruel experiments, I helped lead the successful effort to stop it last year,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said in a statement. “I’m disgusted now to learn that, for years, the U.S. government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from U.S. authorities.”

“It’s unnecessary and unacceptable for American taxpayers to fund these institutions, and it has to end now,” Gaetz said.

The White Coat Waste Project praised Trump’s decision to cut the Wuhan lab funding.

“We applaud President Donald Trump for taking swift and decisive action to ensure that American taxpayers are not forced to pay for wasteful and treacherous animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the project’s founder and president, Anthony Bellotti, said in a statement. “Just one week ago, White Coat Waste Project released a blockbuster exposé, which revealed to the world how the National Institutes of Health had given China’s sloppy, state-run bio-agent laboratory part of a $3.7 million taxpayer-funded grant for dangerous animal experiments on coronavirus-infected bats—experiments that put human lives at risk.”

Read more:

While it’s easy to blame Barack Obama for this funding (and as much as I loathe the man), I am not going there. The simple fact is that he was not likely personally aware of the funding and the decision was probably made by a mid-level or upper-level NIH bureaucrat.

Take a look at the listing above. How do any of those expenditures benefit the country or tax-paying Americans?

With the coronavirus stimulus we have added another $2.3-trillion to the federal debt, we need to take greater control of government spending. We have to eliminate pork in congressional budgets. The President needs item veto power and strict rules must be put in place that prevent government bureaucrats from wasting he citizens’ money from capriciously making grants, especially when the grants go to the enemies of the United States.

Hat Tip: erietigertimes.com and pjmedia.com.