DeSantis criticizes China’s COVID-19 ‘cover-up’ in new book, calling US response to CCP actions ‘major failure’

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized China’s massive cover-up of the origin of COVID-19 and said the US response to the communist country’s blame for the pandemic was a “major failure.”

DeSantis made the comments in his new memoir, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for American Renaissance, to be published Tuesday by HarperCollins.

The book, an advance copy of which was provided by Fox News Digital, came out the same week that it was revealed that the US Department of Energy had assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of an accidental leak from a lab in China.

DeSantis wrote that “[t]The fact that the US government did not hold the CCP accountable for its actions to cover up the origin of the coronavirus was a major failure.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to Staten Island police officers February 20, 2023 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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“When the coronavirus pandemic hit, it was terrifying to see how much the US was dependent on China for some of the country’s most important needs,” he wrote. “Everything from N95 masks for medical staff to testing supplies was made in China.”

“It was humiliating for the US to beg the CCP for key supplies to fight the pandemic that originated in China, especially because of the CCP’s role in covering up the origin of the virus,” he continued. “The original theory was that the virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan, China, but in reality the virus probably escaped from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

“In any case, the CCP has been working hard to cover up the existence and origin of the coronavirus to the detriment of the rest of the world,” he added.

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus visit the institute in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province February 3, 2021. .

The Department of Energy, which had previously been undecided on the origin of the pandemic, joined the FBI’s position that the coronavirus likely spread due to an accident in a Chinese laboratory, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing a classified intelligence report recently provided to the Department of Defense. White House and key members of Congress.

The lab leak theory, or the theory that the virus originated from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, has been widely dismissed by Democrats, major news outlets, academics, and social media as a conspiracy theory and “misinformation.” in the early stages of a pandemic.

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