Coronavirus Politics: Trump Says China Using Pandemic To Damage His Reelection Chances

President Trump says he thinks China mishandled the coronavirus outbreak because it wanted to damage his reelection prospects, Reuters reported. The statement came amid reports the administration is pressing intelligence agencies to find evidence the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China.

Internal polling for the Trump campaign reportedly indicates the president will lose to presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Washington Post reported the data indicates Trump is trailing Biden in key swing states, apparently the result of his daily coronavirus briefings.

“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” Trump said in an exclusive Reuters interview. “They’re constantly using public relations to try to make it like they’re innocent parties.”

Trump has been roundly criticized for his administration’s response to the unfolding crisis, which has seen the U.S. economy tank as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders issued by the nation’s governors and local officials. He declined Wednesday to extend government guidelines for dealing with the pandemic and said he planned to hold “some good, old-fashioned, 25,000-person rallies” in the “not-too-distant future.”

Administration officials have accused China of misleading the world about the severity of the coronavirus early on, enabling COVID-19 to spread globally, taking some 230,000 lives as of Thursday morning, more than 61,000 in the United States. Trump also has criticized the World Health Organization for taking China at its word, botching efforts to contain the pandemic, and cut off funding to the agency.

“This should’ve never been allowed to happen. It should’ve been stopped a long time ago, before it ever got here or to other countries,” Trump said Wednesday during a roundtable on reopening the economy with industry executives.

China has said the virus originated in a Wuhan open market that specialized in exotic animals. The market is near a research lab where scientists were studying the virus.

The New York Times reported, however, most intelligence agencies are skeptical hard evidence can be had linking the virus came to a lab. Chinese authorities have discounted the possibility and pushed back by accusing the U.S. military of developing and spreading the pathogen. Experts have ruled out the possibility the virus was developed as a bioweapon although a lab accident has not been ruled out.

The Times said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was pushing intelligence agencies to find more information, and Trump has floated the idea of suing China for “very substantial” damages.