Republicans are deflecting criticism from Trump’s failure to respond to the coronavirus and focusing blame on China.
From the April 9 edition of Fox News’ “Hannity”:
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): So the first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we — we don’t blame Trump, we blame China — the Chinese government’s responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. It’s the Chinese government and the way they behave that led to this pandemic. This is the third one to come out of China.
I want to make our response to this so overwhelming that China will change its behavior. I want to get the medical supply chain back into the United States, and I want to stop [sic] canceling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us, not us paying China. So, I think you’re going to see a bipartisan push back against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.