Coronavirus Mystery: Trump Asks Xi About Wuhan Lab's Role in Pandemic's Origin

The global game-changer called COVID-19 will be the main news topic for months and even years as the mystery of where it originated is unraveled. Equally, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be the main players involved in this effort, which is quickly transforming into a geopolitical power-play.

In normal times, U.S. outlets on opposite sides of the political spectrum cannot agree even on the time of day. But when mounting evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected millions and killed over 135,000 people worldwide so far, was a lab-created pathogen and not a natural mutation from a Chinese wet market, the purveyors of the news line up in lockstep.

Here are key points from reports Thursday by CNN and Fox News, who are opposites politically.

From the left-leaning liberal CNN: "US intelligence and national security officials say the United States government is looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter who caution it is premature to draw any conclusions."

From the right-leaning conservative Fox News: "There is increasing confidence that COVID-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China's government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News."

The strongest evidence supporting a laboratory origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be in the way Chinese authorities handled the outbreak after it was first detected in Wuhan.

According to CNN, The Washington Post has reported on State Department messages from 2018 over concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology bio lab. But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was non-committal as to any links between them and COVID-19.

"The Chinese Communist Party didn't give Americans access when we needed it in that most timely point at the very beginning. Then we know they have this lab. We know about the wet (fresh food) markets. We know that the virus itself did originate in Wuhan. So, all those things come together. There's still a lot we don't know, and this is what the President was talking about today. We need to know the answers to these things," Pompeo said.

Fox News reported that Trump was asked during a White House press conference about reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them. Trump’s answer, “We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.”

To questions about his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said, “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory, I just don’t want to discuss, it’s inappropriate right now.”

Fox News also reported that their sources claim that China suppressed and changed data, lab samples were destroyed, areas were scrubbed, some early reports were erased, and some academic articles were stifled. The sources also said that some doctors and journalists who warned of the spread of the virus "disappeared." At least three doctors died from the virus, including Dr. Li Wenliang who first sounded a warning about it.

China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of the country but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.

The mystery of the virus’s origin may never be known with certainty. But President Trump is now calling for an end to WHO funding over the allegations.