The Chinese Communist Party might not be effective in stopping a global pandemic, but boy does it have its diplomacy game intact.
Beijing, which is accused of censoring doctors and hiding the threat of the coronavirus from the world, might be the gold standard of diplomacy, according to an international correspondent at MSNBC.
That’s the takeaway from a stunning report that praised President Xi Jinping for addressing the World Health Organization. (You know, the health body the U.S. accused of pandemic malfeasance.)
Keir Simmons, the foreign correspondent, told professional Trump-hater Nicolle Wallace that “Trump could have given an address…He didn’t.”
Simmons somehow determined that China seems to be doing “diplomacy better than America at this stage, where President Xi steps up and gives an address” he “kind of steals the limelight.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, apparently dumbfounded, retweeted the clip and wrote, “Is NBC in fact a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP?”
Simmons seems to be overlooking the fact that China has been in the “limelight” since the beginning of the outbreak. Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, told ABC News’ “This Week” that the “Chinese—behind the shield of the World Health Organization—for two months hid the virus from the world and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York and around the world to seed that. They could have kept it in Wuhan, but instead, it became a pandemic.”
Perhaps Trump addressing the body might have been just a little awkward since he wrote in a letter released Tuesday that essentially blamed WHO of ineptitude during the early stages of the virus and pointed to its troubling relationship with Beijing that has also been called out by Taiwan.
“It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world,” Trump wrote to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the WHO. “The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China.”
Simmons said the WHO venue would have been a good venue to talk about his criticism.
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This is not the first time NBC News has been criticized of promoting Chinese propaganda. Last month, the outlet was slammed on social media for “blatantly running Communist Party of China propaganda” after publishing a headline about the country’s gains in its coronavirus fight.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told the “Todd Starnes Radio Show” last month that it is essential that the U.S. holds China’s feet to the fire over the coronavirus outbreak.
Blackburn has been one of the most critical voices in the Senate about China and has proposed a bill that would bring back pharmaceutical manufacturing to the U.S.
“So basically what has happened is that China took all our jobs and they sent back to us a virus,” she said.