Anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney thinks it’s possible the Chinese government manufactured the COVID-19 coronavirus as a bioweapon with the purpose of disbanding massive anti-government protests in Hong Kong, grinding the United States’ economy and military to a halt, and harming President Donald Trump’s chances at reelection in November.
Gaffney, president of the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy, joined right-wing radio host Lars Larson for an interview on “The Lars Larson Show” uploaded Tuesday to SoundCloud. Larson began the segment by characterizing assertions that China’s government created the coronavirus to disband Hong Kong protests as a “conspiracy theory” but said he brought Gaffney on to “test out” the notions. But instead of debunking the right-wing conspiracy theory, Gaffney insisted such theories be treated with a degree of plausibility.
“I don’t know whether they intentionally did that, Lars. I think that they have successfully taken advantage of it. There’s no getting around that,” Gaffney said. “The pandemic turned off those demonstrations and has created conditions under which the [Chinese Communist] party evidently now believes it can move swiftly to begin rounding up those who led and, presumably, those who participated over time in those demonstrations.”
As for whether China intentionally manufactured the coronavirus as a bioweapon, Gaffney said, “We have to actually consider that possibility.”
Larson challenged Gaffney to explain why a country would produce a disease like the coronavirus as a bioweapon since the coronavirus is less infectious than measles and less deadly than many other infectious diseases.
“Would you use something that is relatively benign, and maybe even use it on your own people, to obscure the fact that that is what you’re doing is engaging in biological weapons? It’s a hypothesis that warrants examination,” Gaffney said.
Gaffney said the response to the coronavirus in the U.S. is evidence enough of the kind of damage that such a disease could wreak in a country, “all without firing a shot.”
“If they were doing nothing else but just seeing how this worked out or simply responding to it, strategically, those would be pretty powerful affirmations that biological warfare is useable and can be very, very effective in terms of accomplishing their goals,” Gaffney said.
Larson compared China releasing the coronavirus to attack the U.S. to someone setting his own home on fire in hopes of damaging his neighbor’s home. China was struck hard and early during the pandemic and thousands of Chinese citizens have died from the disease.
Gaffney went on to theorize that the tactic of China harming its own people wouldn’t be entirely out of place if the country’s larger objective was to weaken the U.S. and make sure that Trump was not reelected president. Gaffney said that he believed that Chinese President Xi Jinping had one overarching objective that overrides all else: destroying Trump.
