In a fiery return to the COVID-19 origin debate, former President Donald Trump has made headlines with a bold claim regarding how the pandemic may have started — and it involves a surprising detail.
Speaking during a White House press event, Trump speculated that the coronavirus outbreak might have been the result of a Wuhan-based scientist accidentally spreading the virus to others — possibly even through contact with a romantic partner. “From the start, I believed it came from a lab,” he said. “It might’ve been a case of someone stepping out for lunch with their girlfriend or mingling with people unknowingly — that’s how it got out, if you ask me.”
His comments come just after the Chinese government suggested in a controversial report that COVID-19 may have originated in an American biotech lab, not in Wuhan as widely believed. In that report, China also accused the U.S. of using them as a scapegoat.
Trump, never one to shy away from controversy, responded not only with words but with action. He signed an executive order halting all federal funding for “gain-of-function” research in foreign nations — a practice where viruses are engineered to be more infectious or deadly in order to study them.
The directive targets research in countries like China and Iran and cites COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu as examples of what could go wrong with lab-modified pathogens. The order emphasizes that U.S. funds should not support foreign research that could trigger future pandemics, particularly referencing projects conducted by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Americans deserve to be protected from lab accidents or reckless experiments abroad,” the order states. “We won’t fund research that could potentially unleash the next global health crisis.”
Public health officials and political commentators are split on the move — some applauding the step as long overdue, while others call it a dangerous distraction from broader pandemic preparedness efforts.
