White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany holds her first press conference on May 1, 2020, in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused to say on Friday whether President Donald Trump was seriously considering putting new tariffs on China for the coronavirus pandemic, but she accused China of mishandling the situation.
“I won’t get ahead of any comments from the president, but I will echo the president’s displeasure with China. It’s no secret that China mishandled the situation,” she said. “Just a few examples for you, they did not share the genetic sequence until a professor in Shanghai did so on his own the very next day. China shut down its lab for ‘rectification.’
“They slow-walked information on human-to-human transmission alongside the World Health Organization and didn’t let U.S. investigators in at a very important time. So we take displeasure with China’s actions, but I certainly won’t get ahead of the president,” McEnany said.
NBC News White House Correspondent Kristen Welker pointed out that Trump said he has a high degree of confidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, but the intelligence community is still investigating. She asked whether the president has information that led him to draw a conclusion that the intelligence community has not yet.
McEnany said that Trump’s statement was “consistent with the other intelligence assessments.”
“While we continue to have very limited and dubious data from China, current assessments say that President Trump’s statement is consistent with what some analysts believe is the epicenter of where the virus began, and I would note that intelligence statement you’re referring to really made two points,” she said.
“One, that the virus originated in China, two that it began through contact with infected animals, or was the result of an accident in a laboratory in Wuhan, so I consider that consistent with what the president said that he’s seen intelligence suggesting it could be in a Wuhan laboratory,” McEnany said.
Welker said that the director of national intelligence issued a statement saying they are still investigating the two scenarios that McEnany mentioned. She asked whether Trump was creating mixed messages by not saying the U.S. is still investigating the origins of COVID-19.
“Let me remind everyone that intelligence is just an estimate essentially, and it’s up to policymakers. In this case, the policymaker is the president of the United States, and he’ll make that decision at the right time,” McEnany said.
As to whether the president is close to making a decision on what to do about China, McEnany said, “Look, again I will not get ahead of the president’s decision or the timing of that decision. He takes it very seriously, because the decisions of China that I referenced slow-walking some of that information put American lives at risk, and rest assured, this president has one priority, and that is the safety and well-being of American lives.”
