Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) ripped establishment U.S. media outlets who have mischaracterized his comments on the origins of the coronavirus outbreak plaguing China and the world during an exclusive interview with Breitbart News this week.

Cotton, who this past weekend during an appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News Channel program Sunday Morning Futures laid out how Communist China has not been honest about the origins of the coronavirus, has been the subject of vicious attacks from establishment media in the U.S. as a result.

In particular, during the Bartiromo interview, Cotton specifically said there is not evidence to suggest that the coronavirus originated in a high-security biochemical lab the Chinese Communist Party government operates in Wuhan. But since the government’s original official story about the virus’s origin is collapsing under scrutiny, the senator argued that the question needs to be asked—and that that theory, along with several other more plausible virus origin theories than the Communists’ original and likely false claim that the virus originated in a food market, need to be pursued. Cotton argued that the Communists must allow internationally renowned independent western experts into China to investigate the matter.

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all,” Cotton said in the Bartiromo interview.

WATCH THE FULL COTTON INTERVIEW WITH BARTIROMO:

Cotton has been aggressive in his criticism of Communist China on coronavirus, as he was in the Fox News interview and in this exclusive interview with Breitbart News. He was also the first U.S. senator to call for President Donald Trump’s administration to extend a temporary travel ban to China in order to protect Americans from the disease—which he did in another Breitbart News exclusive a few weeks ago.

In his interview with Breitbart News on Monday, Cotton—who is also launching a new effort to back conservative Republican veterans for Congress—called on China to allow western experts into Wuhan province in China to investigate coronavirus and its origins.

“Of course the Chinese Communist Party needs to be open and transparent, and they have not been from the beginning as they still refuse to be,” Cotton said. “Just in the past couple days, they released a so-called secret speech from Chairman Xi that he supposedly gave in early January to demonstrate how on top of matters he was blaming the local officials—an endemic problem to communist government. It was like a parody of historical revisionism, like old-school Marxist Leninists. What the Chinese Communist Party needs to do is open up to internationally recognized experts—not Iranian experts or even Russian ones, but European and American and Canadian and Japanese—where there’s no question of their credentials or their integrity and allow them into Wuhan, allow them into the food market, and allow them into the super laboratory in Wuhan so they can figure out exactly where this virus came from and we can glean lessons from that to develop effective diagnostic testing and vaccines.”

But perhaps more importantly than that, Cotton laid out how the establishment media—much of which has accused him of spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus—is “spouting” Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

“The second point you make though is about the media, and this is yet again a gross form of mainstream media bias—they are spouting the party line, and in this case it is the Communist Party line,” Cotton told Breitbart News. “They are doing everything they can to be apologists for the Chinese Communist Party when in fact it is in the Communist Party system of government that has inflicted this outbreak upon the world—and most importantly upon their own people. The Chinese people, after all, are the first and worst victims of the Communist Party government in China. It’s time the media start directing these questions not at skeptics in Washington, but begin directing their skepticism towards Chinese apparatchiks in Beijing.”

For instance, after the Fox News interview with Bartiromo, the Washington Post’s Paulina Firozi wrote a piece that in the headline says Cotton “keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.”

The Post piece, however, just quotes a few experts disagreeing with Cotton on his questioning of the matter and does not even address the Communist Party of China’s likely false claims that the virus originated in a food market. In response to that story, Cotton sent out a tweet-storm further explaining his questions about the virus origins:

Let me debunk the debunkers. @paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: https://t.co/536ygN1gC7 — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

2. Good science, bad safety (eg, they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred) — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach) — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in) — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

Again, none of these are “theories” and certainly not “conspiracy theories.” They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence, if the Chinese Communist Party would provide it. — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

We ought to be transparent with the American people about all this. Maybe some of these so-called experts think they know better. I don’t. And they really don’t either. — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

But, then, the New York Times published its own piece claiming that Cotton was repeating a “fringe theory” about the “origin” of coronavirus. In it, the newspaper takes the Communists in China at their word about the origins of the virus—not questioning the false claims it originated in a food market. “The Chinese authorities say the outbreak began in a market in Wuhan where wild animals were sold,” the New York Times’ Alexandra Stevenson wrote.

Throughout the article, Stevenson repeatedly frames Cotton’s questioning of the Communist government in Beijing using words and phrases like “rumor” or “conspiracy theory” or “lacks evidence” or “has been dismissed by scientists” to describe what the senator was saying—while offering no such criticism whatsoever of the Communist Party line.

Cotton hit back at Stevenson in a separate tweet:

If @jotted took the time to actually listen to what I’ve said, she wouldn’t embarrass herself so badly. Instead, she spouts the party line—the Communist Party line. https://t.co/2vu7B4JQPy — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 17, 2020

In his Breitbart News exclusive interview this week, the senator made clear though that it is unsurprising to see establishment U.S. media outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times—among the many others attacking him this week—defending the Communist Party.

“For years and years and years, China has engaged in a concerted effort to court western media,” Cotton told Breitbart News. “China has been paying millions of dollars to the New York Times and Washington Post to run their propaganda sections. And of course, there’s always the romance between left-wing reporters and left-wing government, of which communism is the best example, so there’s a lot of reasons why the media reflexively defends China, but they have to stop it and they have to hold Beijing to account for the good of the entire world.”