“The View” hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin said they believe that if Donald Trump had not used xenophobic rhetoric at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, countless people would have listened to the COVID-19 lab leak theory.
On the Wednesday episode of “The View,” Goldberg, along with co-hosts Hostin, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Joy Behar and Sara Haines, discussed the theory, which is making headlines again after the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that a Chinese lab was most likely the source of COVID-19.
One other government agency, the FBI, has moderate confidence that COVID-19 came from a lab incident. FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged the agency’s assessment of the theory on Tuesday.
Although the virus began spreading in December 2019, reports of the outbreak did not make global news until early January 2020.
Commenting on the recent development on “The View,” Goldberg, 67, said that regardless of where the virus came from, Trump still “made it about Asian people.” Following his public remarks, anti-Asian hate crimes spiked across the country in 2020 and the following years.
Goldberg also brought up comedian Jon Stewart’s reaction to the recent development, saying, “I’m sure Jon Stewart didn’t realize that that’s what was happening because I’m sure he didn’t know what was going on all over the country with Asian folks getting smacked and hit and people saying stuff to them about bringing the disease here.”
Stewart first voiced the lab leak theory during his guest appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in June 2021 and faced backlash for his comments, with some people accusing him of being “racist against Asian people.”
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