Chinese Communist Party-controlled media outlets are relying on articles from The New York Times (NYT) – including an article by Obama-era National Security Advisor Susan Rice – to brand President Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic a “failure.”
An article in the CCP-controlled CGTN news outlet is entitled: “The U.S.’s Fixation On Shifting Blame to China Does Not Help.” It begins with a statement describing its use of “excerpts” from two NYT articles: “It’s Not Enough to ‘Get Back to Normal,” an op-ed by Rice, and a report from three staff writers: “U.S.-China Feud Over Coronavirus Erupts at World Health Assembly.“
China Global Television Network or ‘CGTN’ is a registered “foreign agent” in the U.S. and identified as a “long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression,” with a “mission to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party.”
As a result, anti-U.S. and anti-Trump content dominate their website.
The piece, bolstered by the inclusion of Western analysis, absolves China of any responsibility for spawning and spreading the coronavirus:
“the U.S. shouldn’t blame China for its own failures to address a pandemic that was foreseeable and predictable as soon as the administration got word as to what was happening in late December/early January.”
This timeline, however, is grossly inaccurate, as the CCP purposefully strong-armed the World Health Organization into delaying the announcement of the virus’ human-to-human transmission capabilities and a pandemic warning even through late January
The article directly quotes the New York Times, leveraging critiques of President Trump by the World Health Assembly. They claim the U.S. President was “reluctant to cooperate with the world to combat the pandemic,” adding: “his decision last month to freeze financial contributions to the group in the middle of a global pandemic came as critics pointed to his own administration’s slow and bungled response to a pandemic that has infected nearly 1.5 million people in the United States and killed nearly 90,000.”
The CGTN report continues to crib from the Times: “…to many of the President’s supporters, the WHO and other international organizations are to blame for lost jobs, low wages and economic uncertainty in the United States. But Mr. Trump will need to convince a broad part of the electorate that he was not responsible for the deaths and massive economic calamity caused by the virus, and casting the WHO and the Chinese government as enemies could be an effective way.”
While CGTN does not quote Rice verbatim, it uses concepts outlined in the article by the former National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations such as the claim that the U.S. is “condemned to be led by a president who has no conception of the national interest apart from his personal interest” and claims that President Trump’s “failings” are “destructive and lethal.”
In short, President Trump’s incompetence is leveled as the chief driver of coronavirus-induced damage, not China.
In lockstep with Rice, the main takeaway from the CGTN article is that “the U.S.’s own failure to respond to this pandemic something China is not responsible for.”
While baseless attacks against President Trump are expected from establishment outlets like the NYT and personnel like Rice, their proliferation into CCP-run media dangerously grants credibility to the regime’s disinformation and lies.
