News/Commentary

MSNBC facing crisis of credibility after lab-leak ‘conspiracy’ narrative falls apart

March 4, 2023 | | Print Article

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace doesn’t know much, but of one thing she was certain: COVID-19 did not escape a Wuhan lab, and Donald Trump was a big orange liar for pushing “conspiracy theorists” to suggest such a ridiculous notion.

From the early days of the pandemic, the passionately anti-GOP host who once proudly declared she was a Dr. Anthony Fauci “groupie” told her viewers that anyone who believed a genetically-altered virus originated in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology needed to be wrapped in tinfoil.

On April 30, 2020, Wallace blasted then-President Trump for wanting U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate what she called one of “Trump world’s most favorite conspiracy theories,” according to Fox News Digital’s (FND) Brian Flood.

Now, following FBI Director Christopher Wray’s admission that COVID likely did, in fact, find its way out of a Chinese lab — a theory backed up in a bombshell report from the U.S. Energy Department — Wallace is suddenly silent, prompting Flood to write that “anyone who relies on MSNBC’s ‘Deadline: White House’ for news would be in the dark about Wray and the Energy Department.”

But Wallace was so sure.

Back in 2020, she waved a New York Times article titled, “Trump officials are said to press spies to link virus and Wuhan labs” and read to her viewers with a conviction that can only come from relying on other people’s work for your opinion.

“Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials,” The Times reported. “The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.”

It was terribly concerning, The Times argued, as, “Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China.”

The next day, armed with a report from The Washington Post, Wallace brought on Jeremy Bash, a former official in the Obama administration, to bash Trump for his “confidence” in the lab leak theory.

“Many scientists argue that the evidence tilts firmly toward a natural transmission,” Wallace read to her viewers.

She needed Bash by her side to ensure she was understanding things correctly.

“It sounds like, not even among the options is the scenario depicted by Donald Trump,” Wallace said.

Bash assured her that she could, in fact, read.

He then insisted that “conspiracy theorists were parroting” Trump’s Wuhan lab remarks.

So, Wallace ran with the approved narrative, telling viewers on May 4, 2020, that there was no “smoking gun” to the lab leak theory.

“The Trump administration yesterday stepping up its attacks on China and that lab, but their assessment that the virus began at the lab in Wuhan not one shared by U.S. Intelligence, who spoke to NBC News saying, there’s no, quote, smoking gun evidence pointing them in that direction and there may never be,” she confidently reported.

By May 21, Wallace was simply calling the idea of a leak in the Wuhan lab a “false conspiracy theory.”

It was thanks to reporting like that, that actual scientists and independent journalists who dared to think for themselves were censored into oblivion, their careers and reputations destroyed.

It wasn’t until President Joe Biden ordered an investigation into COVID’s origins the following year that Wallace bothered to muster some concern over the lab leak theory.

And she felt justified in failing to previously consider the obvious connection between the Wuhan lab and the pandemic because, after all, that was a Trump “talking point.”

“This was one of his early talking points. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to know why people didn’t run it to ground or why there wasn’t a bipartisan effort to do so,” Wallace said, according to Flood. “But just from a medical scientific community perspective, it seems like an urgent intelligence priority to get to the bottom of this.”

Now that the COVID cat is out of Wray’s bag, Wallace appears to be ignoring the subject altogether.

“Wallace did not cover the latest information regarding COVID lab leaks on her MSNBC program this week, according to a search of transcripts,” Flood reports. “The terms ‘Wuhan’ and ‘lab leak’ were not mentioned on ‘Deadline: White House’ since Wray’s comments and the Energy Department report.”

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Melissa Fine
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