Haberman: There Was ‘Groupthink’ on COVID Origin, But You Won’t Get Benefit of the Doubt When You Say ‘Kung Flu’

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” CNN Political Analyst and New York Times Washington Correspondent Maggie Haberman stated that “there was a Twitter groupthink” on the origins of COVID-19 and “a number of journalists who declined to ask questions,” but “when you have a president and you have a secretary of state who say they have seen evidence and won’t then share it, especially when one of them is saying something like Kung Flu, you’re not going to get given benefit of the doubt.”

Haberman said the issue is one where it’s “very hard to have a nuanced conversation with almost anyone about it. Look, I’m not a scientist. I have no idea what happened. I have no idea where this came from. I think that scientists rely too much on the stasis of a lack of information, on a number of topics, not just the virus’ origin. Early on when this happened, I think that there were a number of journalists who declined to ask questions, who were covering specifically the origins of this virus, and I think there was a Twitter groupthink to try to push back on people who raised questions.”

She continued, “But at the end of the day, I come back to the fact that there can be enough issues here to go around, and when you have a president and you have a secretary of state who say they have seen evidence and won’t then share it, especially when one of them is saying something like Kung Flu, you’re not going to get given benefit of the doubt. You’re not going to get given benefit of the doubt after four years of burning your own credibility. That’s just the way this works. There were people in that administration who did take this seriously early on. … There were a lot who were much more content to try to downplay, not just talking about where the virus might have come from, but the threat itself. It is important to study, Brianna, where it came from. I don’t know that Biden and his administration are going to have answers in the 90 days or slightly less now that he set for the intelligence community to come back to him. But there are obviously still a number of outstanding questions about this.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett