Trump’s White House Launches a COVID Website Aimed at Biden and WHO

Trump revived allegations of lab leaks against China and built a COVID website that criticized Biden and the WHO.

Republican US President Donald Trump has developed a new website under the White House banner that attributes the virus’s origins to a lab leak in China as part of a renewed effort to reframe the narrative around the COVID-19 epidemic.

The program, which launched on Friday, also takes aim at the World Health Organization (WHO), former US health official Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Democratic former President Joe Biden.

Key public health policies implemented during the epidemic, such as mask mandates, social separation, and lockdowns—actions that were extensively embraced globally to prevent the spread of the virus—are publicly questioned on the website.

Notably, Trump expressed discontent with the WHO’s pandemic response and, soon after taking office in January, started a 12-month process to remove the US from the organization. The WHO’s biggest source of funding at the time was the United States.

Officials from the WHO, Fauci, and Biden have not yet responded to the accusations on the website.

Trump also said in his early days in office that Fauci, who was the spokesperson for America’s response to COVID-19, ought to pay for his own security. The US government stopped providing protective assistance for the longtime health official in response to threats against him.

The origins of the virus are still up for debate. According to a CIA spokeswoman in January, the agency determined that a lab leak was a more likely cause of the pandemic than natural transmission, but the decision was made with “low confidence” and both possibilities are still being investigated.

China’s government has backed attempts to track the virus’s origins through scientific investigation, but it still rejects the lab leak scenario. Washington has been accused by Beijing of politicizing the matter, especially by allowing US intelligence services to participate in the investigations. The lab leak scenario has been rejected by Chinese authorities as unfounded.

Trump’s most recent digital endeavor indicates an attempt to alter public perception while debates over the genesis and management of COVID-19 continue, which might influence political and policy discourse in the coming months.