Robert O’Brien, President Trump’s new National Security Adviser, is a no-nonsense guy. He has already begun a long-planned downsizing of the National Security Council staff that was delayed by the Democrats’ impeachment farce, and which had the Democrat-media complex caterwauling as the Vindmans were frog-marched out of the White House in early February. That is a direct frontal assault on the Deep State that is long overdue.

He has also taken aim at the Communist Chinese for their continuing attempts to try to shift blame for the spread of the Wuhan virus away from China to the United States and elsewhere. This and more was discussed in a Lou Dobbs Q&A with Chinese expert Dr. Michael Pillsbury (Director for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute) on Friday night:

Dobbs: We have a lot of conversation about the World Health Organization (WHO) and its relationship to US health agencies, and for a while it seemed as if a number of those public health officers in our country were sort of deferring to the WHO. With my feelings about the United Nations, that left me very uncomfortable. Your reaction? Pillsbury: There is a very sharp contrast with what the WHO leadership is saying – they’re praising China … they’ve even praised President Xi … this in line with the propaganda campaign in the last week or so that Xi has gone to Wuhan and everything is getting better, factories are opening up. So the WHO in some ways has aligned itself with Chinese propaganda. On the other side, our National Security Adviser at the Heritage Foundation – Robert O’Brien – gave a really excellent speech calling China out. He made two key points. He said there was a cover-up [by the Chinese] for the first two months. This is a very harsh charge to make, and I think he’s accurate. Then he said that this has cost the global community two months of time. This is also very hard to take. Dobbs: It’s cost us an advance by this disease that was absolutely unnecessary and could have been prevented. Pillsbury: Our own public health experts have been siding with President Trump that this is outrageous conduct by China. We have tried to be polite and tactful because we still need to get more information from China, but I think Robert O’Brien was exactly spot on to call the Chinese on this. They’re angry, so today they hit out at us today and yesterday. Dobbs: Here are Robert O’Brien’s statements. (video clip of O’Brien: “This outbreak in Wuhan was covered up. It probably cost the world community two months to respond, and those two months – if we had those had been able to sequence the virus and had the cooperation necessary from the Chinese – I think we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what’s now happening across the world.”) Dobbs: [That was Robert O’Brien] reacting to what has been a full-on disinformation campaign by the Chinese, and it includes trying to rename the Wuhan virus. This idiotic nonsense that’s sprung up in the press with those who are sympathetic to the Communist Chinese government, saying that you can’t call it the Wuhan virus … you can’t call it the Chinese virus … because that is “xenophobic,” … it’s racist, which is nonsense. Let’s look at some other diseases and viruses. (an onscreen graphic contained the following information: Ebola virus: from Ebola River in Congo

West Nile virus: from West Nile region of Uganda

Zika virus: from Zika Forest in Uganda

Lyme disease: from Lyme, Connecticut

Rocky Mountain fever: from the Rocky Mountains) Your thoughts about that nonsense coming from some of the “luminaries of the Left” in this country. Pillsbury: Once again, the World Health Organization took the lead. They gave their own special name to this virus, and they dropped saying Wuhan or China. The Chinese themselves following up very quickly … they’ve even referred to this as the “Italian virus,” trying to shift the blame to the Italians. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is this comment by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman yesterday is a tweet that basically the US Army spread the virus in China. Dobbs: I’m know and am talking about the absurdity of trying to control the language as a departure for our “good friends, the Chinese.”

End of the Q&A. It’s a big deal for the Trump administration to directly accuse the Chinese of a cover-up, as the Trumpian negotiating strategy has been to avoid embarrassing the Chinese and allow them to save face in direct talks. With NSA Robert O’Brien publicly accusing the Chinese of their non-cooperation and failure to inform and share information about the virus with the world community, you just know that the US national security and intelligence communities have plenty of supporting information to back that up. And there is a great deal of open-source information available, too, as there are several reports that the doctors who first identified the virus were either silenced or put in isolation so that the word of this virus could not get out to the rest of the world. Here is one such report:

The Chinese doctor who was silenced by authorities when he was one of the first to sound the alarm about the coronavirus has died from the virus, according to the hospital where he was being treated. Worldwide, the number of cases has passed 31,000. https://t.co/kTmukLln2q pic.twitter.com/mWv718SCZ2 — WebMD (@WebMD) February 7, 2020

That the WHO is aligned with the ChiComs in their efforts to obfuscate the origins of the disease is no recent surprise. Some in the media have been onto that game for over a month now:

The WHO could have tried to hold China accountable for their bungled response, but instead, the organization’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, decided to play footsie with the despotic regime. Tedros offered sycophantic praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “political commitment” and “political leadership” in dealing with coronavirus cases. As the WHO coddled China, Xi waited two weeks to greenlight an international advance team put together by the WHO to investigate the outbreak. U.S. journalists were understandably critical of China’s lackluster response, fielding tough questions for Dr. Tedros. But the WHO’s director-general carried on praising the “People’s Republic,” extolling “the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak despite the severe social and economic impact that is having on China.”

Once again, not only aren’t we getting our money’s worth from the United Nations (the US pays for 22% of the UN’s annual budget), but we’re also apparently underwriting the WHO to propagandize for Communist China about the Wuhan virus at the rest of the world’s expense! Go figure.

The end.

Stu Cvrk served 30 years in the US Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. An oceanographer and systems analyst through education and experience, Stu is a graduate of the US Naval Academy where he received a classical liberal education which serves as the key foundation for his political commentary. He threads daily on Twitter on a wide range of political, military, foreign policy, government, economics, and world affairs topics. Read more by Stu Cvrk