‘Elon Musk, are you smashing China’s wok?’ The Chinese regime’s mouthpiece said.
Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter and Tesla, stood in the crosshairs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when he chipped in on the discussion on the origin of COVID-19 and brought attention to the theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
The world’s richest person joined in comments about a Wall Street Journal article on Sunday, Feb. 26, which reported that a classified intelligence report by the Energy Department said the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Chinese regime denies the lab leak theory and has accused its proponents of being conspiracy theorists.
Musk’s Comments
The billionaire hopped on discussions on Twitter following the news, with some users accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of funding gain-of-function research at the WIV before the virus began spreading in early 2020.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab,” wrote a Twitter user with the handle @KanekoaTheGreat. “Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?”
“[Fauci] did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth),” Musk wrote in a reply, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and former White House Chief Medical Advisor. Fauci’s NIAID sent $3.4 million in research grants via non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan laboratory.
Though that comment from Musk came as the latest of a series of jabs at Fauci, it stepped on a few nerves across the Pacific.
“Anti-China political forces in America have yet again hyped up the rumor that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” reads a Feb. 28 article published in the Global Times, the CCP’s mouthpiece publication, titled “‘Elon Musk, are you smashing China’s pot?”
By Gary Bai
