Neil Bush – son of former President George H. W. Bush – co-sponsored a forum with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled influence group, repeatedly asserting that it “doesn’t matter where” COVID-19 originated.
Neil Bush, the founder and Chairman of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, co-hosted the online forum “50 Years of US-China Exchange in Retrospect: The Bush Legacy and Beyond” with the Center for China and Globalization (CCG).
The CCG is a key group within the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), a systematic foreign influence operation seeking “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and influence Westerners to “take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.
Accordingly, Neil Bush downplayed the importance of the hunt for COVID-19’s origins – which many experts believe to be the Wuhan Institute of Virology – and dismissed the likely possibility that the virus escaped from the Chinese state-run lab.
“Who cares where it originated,” Bush asks before reiterating:
“Whether it originated in a lab or from a bat or from the United States or from wherever – who cares?”
“Throw away the crazy conspiracy theories and just assume there was an origin of some kind – doesn’t matter where it originated,” he later emphasizes.
Despite Neil Bush’s apathy towards unearthing the origins of COVID-19, he confidently debunks the theory that the virus was released intentionally.
“I reject the idea that there was some malicious effort to release a virus that causes a pandemic,” he asserts before adding, “I think that’s a crazy notion that there was some intent from one side or the other to do this on purpose.”
David Firestein, the President and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations who also participated in the dialogue, affirmed Neil Bush’s stance on COVID-19’s origins while adding “the idea that this was something that was unleashed upon the world with intentionality is ludicrous and just not a serious idea.”
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7MSdT9m2nQ&ab_channel=CenterforChinaandGlobalization
