Category Archives: Donald Trump

Michael Cohen has made no secret that he doesn't think Donald Trump will be at the top of the Republican ticket again in 2024, often tweeting to panicked Democrats that they shouldn't worry. He also says that Trump has a good reason for claiming he might run again, even if he knows he won't. "His insatiable need for attention is one reason he continues to flaunt this disingenuous 2024 run," he toldBusiness Insider. "The other is he's making more money doing that than anything he has ever done before."

While Trump still tells his supporters he needs their money to help him fight the 2020 election results nearly a year later, Politico reported that the former president has mostly used the cash to pay his aides and for travel expenses. All of that money coming in has caused Cohen to call his former boss "the greatest grifter in the history of American politics."

In the end, Cohen told Business Insider that he believes Trump will find a good excuse not to run again but will make sure that nobody believes it's his fault. "He'll say he's not going to run again because of bipartisan hatred for him or because of the Democrats or because he doesn't want to put his family through any more," Cohen said. "He cannot stomach the notion of being a two-time loser, but he will continue to grift until the very last second."

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The Real Reason Michael Cohen Thinks Donald Trump Is Falsely Promoting A 2024 Run - The List

"The Apprentice" star's former cook, Andre Rush, told us that Trump likes pretty much everything overcooked. But there was one dish Donald Trump definitely preferred over the rest. "I would have to say burgers would be the number one if I had to put [it] into perspective, as he'd call it the American food," Rush said. Which isn't surprising, considering the entrepreneur has admitted many times that he's a huge fan of U.S. fast food. Some of his go-to restaurant chains include KFC, McDonald's, and Burger King.

Trump's so passionate about fast food, in fact, that he famously served it to Clemson University's football team when they came to the White House to celebrate their win over Alabama in 2019 (via The Guardian). The banquet spread included 300 Big Macs and Whoppers, which the 45th president said was "patriotic." When asked where he stands on the debate of McDonald's versus Wendy's, he was decisive in his response. "If it's American, I like it," Trump explained. "It's all American stuff. No matter what we did, there's nothing you can have that's better than that, right?"

Be sure to pick up Andre Rush's new memoir "Call Me Chef, Dammit!: A Veteran's Journey from the Rural South to the White House," or book him for a motivational speaking engagement.

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The Real Reason Donald Trump Didn't Eat In The Morning, According To Andre Rush - Exclusive - Mashed

Jon Stewart admitted the mistake he made when Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president in 2015.

Back then, the then-host of The Daily Show figured the reality TV personality was a comedic gift from heaven.

But in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Stewart said he misjudged, failing to consider that Trumps certainty, his ridiculousness, his shamelessness is what made him dangerous.

I thought it made him a buffoon, and I thought thats what would disqualify him, said Stewart, whose new Apple TV+ show The Problem With Jon Stewart debuts on Sept. 30.

What it did is made him the perfect vessel, Stewart continued. You have to be shameless to do shameful things.

Im not saying hes the same as these figures, but the most dangerous figures are the ones that seem comic and absurd, Stewart added. Saddam Hussein seems absurd. Muammar Gaddafi would stand in a kaftan and rant like a madman.

Read Stewarts full interview with The Hollywood Reporter here.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Jon Stewart Admits Why He Was Wrong About Donald Trump - Yahoo News

Cindy Adams, the long-serving gossip queen of the New York Post, was battling Hurricane Ida in her Manhattan apartment. Her terriers were disturbed, and she was not sleeping. A glass-enclosed penthouse is not good, she said. The pounding of the rain. And not just rain, the thunder. I was up all night.

The morning after, as blue skies returned, the 91-year-old was back at work, compiling her column just as she has done, five days a week, since 1979, and signing them off: Only in New York, kids, only in New York.

Over the past several weeks Adams star has gone through a transmutation. Gossip, a four-part Showtime documentary focused on the rise and, in some respects, fall of the art of the gossip industry, has just been was released. Adams is heavily featured.

This is it, this is the Big Apple. The big sin city. The city where you can do anything. Get a hamburger at two in the morning, where you can get dirty pictures, a hooker. You can get anything you goddamn want in the world. So it brings everybody like moths to a flame, Adams said, offering a consistently upbeat message of the Naked City past, present and future.

They come from their little townships or villages. They live a reasonably nice life. They come to New York and it all goes to hell. I dont know what theyre like in their home towns, but when they get here for five days they turn into wild people. The ones who stay get devoted to the city.

The New York Post, is of course, a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, his first in the United States ownership of the Wall Street Journal came much later. Newsprint, it is widely reported, is the media barons first love and a trumpet for his viewpoint of power, and who is currently wielding it. Of course were friends, Adams says of her boss. I have an intense love of the New York Post because Im a New Yorker and its the smart mouth of New York.

You cant go the Hamptons, or go out to dinner, if you havent read the Post, because youll have nothing to talk about. It is the quintessentially smart mouth of New York, and we who work on it have a bit of that.

In that sense Adamss beat is the whole city, its powerbrokers and the gossip that surrounds them, often like a bad perfume. Shes a sharp operator who probably would mind being described as a tough broad. My loyalty is to anyone who will give me the best quote or the best story, she says.

Her mother, a single parent, worked as a secretary in the water department. (She later married an insurance agent.) Adams came to gossip a term she doesnt care for via the comedian Joey Adams, her husband from 1952 to his death, in 1999. To Joey, this was the most exciting job on earth, and I got pushed into it, she says. In fact, her husband and the famed columnist Walter Winchell were brothers-in-law. It was Winchell who famously said, Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

In her home, the walls and ceiling are plastered with Post scoops, themselves tributes to the energy of the city. Donald Trump features prominently, along with Harvey Weinstein and a four-decade parade of dubious characters.

Curiously, though, theres no Jeffrey Epstein, an absence that suggests he was a nonentity in social and power terms. I didnt know him. Never met him. If I did, I didnt have any reaction to him, Adams says.

Harvey Weinstein is a different story. Weinstein was subject to countless blind items articles in which the details of a matter are reported but the identities of the people involved are not in the Posts Page Six column and used the tabloid to promote himself, just as the tabloid used him. Harvey Weinstein didnt want to live in Tulsa, she notes.

With the release of the documentary has come new recognition for Adams, but also criticism. Adams is known for making friends, or at least having contacts, with a succession of international rogues, among them the Indonesian president Kusno Sosrodihardjo, aka Sukarno, of whom she cowrote an autobiography in 1965, and Imelda Marcos, the widow of widow of the former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos. Criticism for those associations has amplified by the documentary.

Its a valid point, Adams concedes. When I was a new kid on the block, 1,000 years ago, I was eager to get stories that nobody else could get. Anyone could get a story about a movie star or a TV star. I needed to become something, and I began to find ways to get stories that simply nobody else would have.

But theres a second point, she says, which underscores the New York mentality. These important people like a general or a president are not used to the New York mentality. With Sukarno, people would approach him on their stomachs in the Javanese way. I kissed him on the forehead and called him honey. I was doing what I could do to make them laugh or smile. It was very New York, and thats what it was.

Her friendship with Trump still rankles many. Adams acted as Trumps mouthpiece during a divorce battle. (Trumps then wife, Ivana, went to the New York Daily News columnist Liz Smith. ) Cindy and Donald had been introduced by Roy Cohn, the fearsome attorney, who, she says, is what he is he was awful. I was just a kid, so I meant nothing to him.

But Cohn had use for her husband, who acted a toastmaster at dinners for important people, and Trump learned from Cohn how to use the press to further his goals. Trump and Adams became fast friends, so much so that she avoided writing about him for the four years of his presidency.

It wasnt easy, but I believe in intense loyalty. Hes my friend and extremely good to me when I needed it after my husband passed away. I dont forget something like that.

In that Trump understood and understands how to work the media, now with the self-publishing subsets of social media, is it correct to call his the first tabloid presidency?

He utilised the press, he utilised everything he could to get his name out. Thats how he made his name to begin with. Thats why Roy Cohn told me in the 70s, This kid is going to become something in New York. Hes going to run the city.

Adams was standing by Trump on the night of his election victory, watching seven TV screens from the middle of his office as everyone stood back. He said to me, Do you remember what Roy Cohn said? It was the night that this kid became president of the United States.

Gossip has received positive reviews. An equally good, if fictionalised, take can be found in the Burt Lancaster-Tony Curtis masterpiece Sweet Smell of Success. But Adams hasnt found approval from all quarters.

A reporter from New York magazine described her column as reporting of the kitten heel rather than the shoe leather proudly transactional, rarely transparent, tailored not for the public interest but for private grievance or professional manoeuvring or petty warfare.

But Adams, in her 10th decade, gives as good as she gets. She had a bit of an attitude, and I understood I was going to be castigated. If a lady comes to you and she has long blond hair, and she thinks youre not noticing it and I notice everything, its what I do She placed it down one shoulder and then the other, repeatedly. Its a nervous tic that shows insecurity.

Adams shows no sign of giving up on her beat. Its not for everyone, but she has opinions on how gossip itself hasnt changed but its forums have. When I started it was once a charming, amusing little fun thing. Now everyone is doing it. Every broadcast, every journalist, every newspaper. Its in varying forms, but it is gossip. Its infiltrated the entire world.

As goes Cindy Adams, so goes New York and, in her estimation, the world. For all its problems, its still the capital of the world. You cant get away from it. You cant get tougher and smarter and richer and glossier than you can here. It isnt going to happen in Poughkeepsie. Guardian

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'Donald Trump is my friend. He was extremely good to me when I needed it' - The Irish Times

Despite the many contradictions he makes, such as the U.S. will end in three years while also preparing himself to run for election in three years, Donald Trump made a good point last week. He said: Our country has gone really downhill in the last eight months like nobodys ever seen before. While he did not offer solid proof, he argued that the downhill trajectory will bring the country to its end.

Trump also claimed that America has become a laughingstock to the rest of the world. I am not sure if everyone is laughing, but some people have grown the confidence to bark in America's face. Take the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example. The mighty U.S. and the U.K. are creating a new alliance in the Indo-Pacific by signing an agreement with Australia to acquire nuclear submarines. The French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian dares to reduce this security partnership for the Pacific region (dubbed Aukus, pronounced as aw-kiss) to a multi-billion dollar sale of submarines that will only anger China and serve as the first step in the U.S.-China war.

You cannot count the number of punches in a brawl, but Le Drian dealt a couple of heavy jabs at Aukus. He said he was angry and bitter over the move that breached the country's trust, adding that This isnt done between allies.

The French minister forgets two recent facts about his own country's affairs: France pulled the same move in the Aegean Sea by signing military contracts with Greece without consulting its ally, Turkey, when the Turkish-Libyan maritime agreement to join their exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean was signed. Also, France (and the whole European Union) was working on its own strategic alliance with Australia that encompassed building conventional submarines for Australia.

The U.S. and U.K. simply raised the stakes; the Europeans were expecting more cordial diplomatic relations with the U.S. after the Trump years, and were baffled by the "belligerent" move against China by the U.S and U.K. A senior EU official told CNN that English-speaking countries, the same nations who took the lead in invading Afghanistan and Iraq and we all know the results are now acting against China.

Apparently, China is not as anxious as Mr. Trump about the U.S.' early demise, though traditionally China has never missed an opportunity to confront the other's belligerence. As a matter of fact, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused the U.S., Australia and U.K. of severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts with their pact, adding they would closely watch the situations development.

What is the situation really? Many people are aware that the Biden administration has adopted a one-dimensional worldview that it takes all political steps in accordance with. For instance, the $2 trillion investment in infrastructure and improvements in public services is aligned with the goal of strengthening the country to better compete with China.

President Biden sees foreign policy as a way to counter Chinas rising power. He even left Afghanistan as the U.S. was being bogged down in the country and his hands were tied when it came to China. The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change couldn't even take precedence over China.

Americas China syndrome is nothing new, it is so deep-seated that the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese counterpart in the final months of the Trump administration to assure them that even if the president were to order an attack on China, the armed forces would not obey the command. This general was not fired after the scandalous revelation, because God forbid the Chinese take that to mean that if the president orders an attack on China that the U.S. armed forces would obey him!

It is not the reality of Chinese supremacy but more the perception of the threat that has people on either side of the aisle in Congress scared. Both the former and the current U.S. presidents share this fear, but their ways of coping with it appear different. Trump must have been talking about war to such an extent behind closed doors that the head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff felt the need to call the Chinese to assure them otherwise.

As a traditional democrat, Biden says the aim of his anti-China strategy is to promote democracy; but this, according to Trump, is not going to work and America will be completely destroyed before the next presidential elections. Trump might be right. Of course not about the total destruction of the U.S., but about the failure of Bidens China policy. One or two nuclear submarines in the hands of Aukus will not stop China from increasing its influence abroad. Xi Jinping will not change his mind about building the worlds most powerful economy.

With or without Aukus, or French involvement, China is going to integrate into the global economic system, which in turn will usher in more political liberties. More in this context simply means as much as the hybrid communism of China can take." Despite all the provocation coming from Europe and the U.S. in East Turkestan, have we witnessed any Tiananmen-like reactions from Chinese authorities? That is "political freedom" in China!

But the U.S. fixation on China may be damaging many other aspects of the country's international relations. Israel, for instance, enjoying the American bulldogs attention being fixated on the Eastern end of the yard, might take care of its own problem with Iran. Israeli (and U.S.) newspapers' exaggerations about the Institute for Science and International Security report, claiming that Iran is approaching an atomic milestone and is just a month away from gathering enough material for a nuclear weapon, has not generated the expected intensity in Washington. According to the Israeli media, this is because the Biden administration is blinking on the issue. What is the issue, you might ask?

According to Yonah Jeremy Bob of the Jerusalem Post, it is a U.S., Iran, Israel nuke standoff. Imagine this: President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran orders the Iranian atomic bombs be powered up, he has the button in his hand; on one side of his chair is the U.S. representative, on the other side sits a Scandinavian ambassador representing Israel, and in this nuclear standoff, the whole world is waiting, holding its breath. In just a few minutes Iran is going to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

The reality is more like this: Iran agreed last Sunday to allow international inspectors to install new memory cards into surveillance cameras at its nuclear energy sites to continue filming there. When Israel paints such fictional pictures, it usually acts on its own to delay Iran readying a nuclear bomb through computer sabotage or unexplained explosion in the facilities. In Iraq, they actually bombed the site. The U.S., fearing an incident escalating into regional war in Iran, would usually interfere. Lets hope Bidens fixation with China doesn't end the U.S. soon.

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The US ends in three years; what about the EU? | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Hows this for a paradox? Donald Trump is predicting America will end in three years and is also hinting that he may run for office in 2024 three years from now.

The former president made the contradictory claims during a Newsmax interview on Tuesday with his former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. True to form, he also falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

After Trump said our country has gone really downhill in the last eight months like nobodys ever seen before, he suggested, without offering any proof, that the country will end.

And you go to these elections coming up in 22 and 24 were not going to have a country left, Trump said. The election was rigged, and were not going to have a country left in three years, Ill tell you that.

Spicer then tried to end the interview, possibly because Newsmax is facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit fromDominion Voting Systemsfor deliberately lying about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election and defaming the voting machine company.

However, Spicer did have one last question. After noting that Trump has said he has made a decision about a 2024 run and that his followers would be happy, Spicer asked the former president when he might announce his plans.

Trump avoided a direct answer but promised Spicer he would be happy with the decision and also claimed America is now a laughingstock.

Some Twitter users couldnt help but think Trump did a self-own.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Donald Trump Predicts America Will End Within 3 Years - Yahoo News

What was the weirdest thing that Donald Trump did on Saturday, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11? It is not immediately obvious. While the four other men who served as president during the twenty-first century attended ceremonies honoring the dead, Trump spent the day as only he could, which is to say he dawdled through the day in the crassest manner imaginable.

He recorded a video message for the Korean Unification Churchthe religious cult better known as the Moonies and best known for its mass arranged marriages and strict regulation of its members sexual and private livesin which he lavished praise on the organization, referring to it as an inspiration. He also bizarrely claimed that his election had magically brought peace to the otherwise volatile Korean peninsula. Looking back today, its easy to forget how dangerous the situation was when I was elected, Trump said. Missiles were flying, nuclear weapons were being tested, and powerful threats were being issued every single day. Under my leadership, the United States adopted a policy of unprecedented strength doing more than any prior administration.

Then, not to be outdone, he provided pay-per-view color commentaryon a TikTok competitor for a fightif you can even call it thatbetween a nearly 60-year-old Evander Holyfield and 44-year-old MMA fighter Vitor Belfort. Trump mostly talked with his co-commentator, excitable lackwit son Donald Jr., about the good old days, Holyfields once shockingly speedy punches, and Larry Holmess immaculate left jab. On Saturday, the 58-year-old Holyfield could barely punch and was roundly pummeled by his comparatively sprier opponent, in a match that should have been disallowed via the Geneva Convention.

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Donald Trump Is Running for President, and It Will Be Just as Bizarre as Last Time - The New Republic

On the first day of its publication, Mary Trump's book sold a million copies. She told The Sydney Morning Herald that she has made a neat profit off of it and she has the publicity surrounding her uncle's court case to thank for that. "Yes, I am quite well-off now. I was just hoping I would make my advance back, so it was quite surprising," she said. "Of course, Donald helped [with the book's publicity] by suing me."

Still, she didn't give him all the credit, continuing to explain, "But I think it's also because the story resonated with a lot of people. That's been the most gratifying thing other than hopefully having some tiny impact on the way things went in 2020 hearing that people felt understood because they had similar situations."

In the midst of her legal proceedings with Donald Trump, Mary went on to publish another book that touches on her family's political ties.In "The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal," Mary discusses themental health impacts of Donald's time in the White House, both for herself and the nation, per USA Today. The new book was released inJuly and Mary may have even more to say.It seems Donald's niece isn't finished telling her side of the story and isn't holding anything back. While Donald may oppose, she is making the most of the situation and using her experiences to fuel a flourishing writing career.

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What Mary Trump Liked About Being Sued By Donald Trump - The List

Even before the first votes were cast much less counted in Tuesdays California gubernatorial recall, Republicans were already claiming voter fraud a sign they expect to lose.

It was an indication of things to come and one to be expected from a man with his shoddy reputation in business, years of stiffing contractors and a well-documented record of tens of thousands of incidents of public prevarication while president.

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Add to that his monumental ego Im an extremely stable genius. and you can begin to understand why he is incapable of coping with rejection.

He continues spreading the Big Lie about his election loss and has millions of followers parroting it. The man with golden toilet in his penthouse has set the gold standard for Republican defeat: We wuz robbed!

When candidates he endorsed lost elections, Trump would say that without his backing the margin of defeat would have been enormous, but thanks to him it was minuscule (if not stolen). He twice suffered what Politico called a crushing and embarrassing political blow after backing losing candidates in primary and general elections in a single Alabama senate race.

When he and his band of legal misfits led by Rudy Giuliani lost 59 court challenges to the 2020 election, many being thrown out by judges he personally appointed, Trump refused to concede. Ever faultless, he has been quick and spiteful to blame everyone and anyone else when things dont go his way. Accusations of voter fraud have become SOP (standard operating procedure) in Trumps GOP.

HIS DENIALS have damaged many lives, but for Trump himself the Big Lie campaign has been quite profitable.

Through his various political committees he has waged relentless post-election fundraising campaigns touting his baseless claims that the presidency was stolen. Media reports estimate he has brought in a quarter of a billion dollars, possibly much more, while spending little or none on audits and GOP candidates.

Trumps lasting damage to the Republican party will be enormous, but possibly the most harmful to the party and to the republic will be his culture of denial. Refusal to accept the decision of the voters, as he does, is spreading and threatens to undermine the Constitution and the American electoral system. He still commands the support of a majority of his party, according to several polls.

For Trump, winning is everything. Hes the guy who promised were going to win so much youre going to be so sick and tired of winnings sick and tired.

That was followed by his party losing the presidency, the House and the Senate last November.

Some of the great victories Trump didnt brag about were setting the worlds highest COVID-19 death toll, a nation running out of toilet paper, record stock market drops and unemployment jumps. And who can forget his medical megalomania in suggesting the virus be treated with injections of household disinfectant?

Another victory he promised was a new and improved Iran nuclear deal. He walked away from the original, imposed new sanctions and sat by as Iran dramatically expanded is uranium enrichment and moved closer to the nuclear threshold.

The New York Times Maggie Haberman said that Trump cant handle the concept of the label loser.

Hes going to have to get used to it. Leading nonpartisan historians have already ranked him one as one of the worst presidents. Hes flirting with running again in 2024; its a great money-maker for him, but why are many Democrats hoping hell try for an encore?

They apparently feel that tying their opponents to Trump will help motivate their own voters, especially in non-presidential elections where their party has difficulties turning out voters. It is on display right now in the California, Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests.

Those three elections will indicate whether Trump still has power to mobilize liberal voters and keep suburban moderates in the Democratic tent, even if he is no longer on the ballot or in office, the Washington Post reported.

The larger questions facing the nation, however, remain about the long-term impact of Trumps culture of denial and whether Republicans can retake their party from the Trump cultists.

Trump is a contagious virus that threatens the heart and soul of the American body politic.

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Donald Trump caused the Republican culture of denial - opinion - The Jerusalem Post

Former US President Donald Trump has spoken exclusively to Sky News Australia about how he believes COVID-19 escaped the infamous Wuhan lab in central China.

Former US President Donald Trump has revealed he suspects "gross incompetence" may have led to COVID-19 escaping a Wuhan lab.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News Australia journalist Sharri Markson, the former president detailed how classified intelligence pointed to the Wuhan Institute of virology as the likely source of the deadly virus.

Some of the intelligence is classified and I can't talk about it, but it most likely, and when I say most likely, like 95 per cent, came from the Wuhan lab, the former president said.

I don't know if they had bad thoughts or whether it was gross incompetence, but one way or the other it came out of Wuhan, it came from the Wuhan lab.

I started hearing stories that there were lots of body bags outside of the lab. I heard that a long time ago. And if they did in fact have body bags, that was one little indication wasn't it?

COVID-19 has killed more than four million people worldwide and led to financial hardship on a global scale.

Mr Trump said it was unlikely the virus was deliberately leaked from the Wuhan lab.

I think it was probably an accident, I don't think it was on purpose. If it was, that's essentially war, he said.

Mr Trump also shed light on a theory about how the virus may have escaped the Wuhan lab.

A scientist walked out and had lunch outside in a park or something with the girlfriend and he had it and she had it, he said.

I don't know if it was patient zero or patient something else, but that's one theory.

I think that it was incompetence. I think that it escaped from the lab through incompetence.

In the documentary, Ms Markson also spoke to an investigator who claimed questions needed to be answered about whether the virus was genetically manipulated to serve as a bio-weapon, even if it had indeed leaked from the lab.

Former COVID-19 Investigator David Asher said the Chinese were undergoing research which was definitely related to biological warfare ambitions.

However, Mr Trump told Ms Markson he wanted to give China the benefit of the doubt especially as the global superpower was also severely damaged by the virus.

I really don't think it was (a biological weapon), but nobody can really know for sure, Mr Trump said.

And certainly now most of that evidence is gone, and it's going to be very hard to find out.

On the September 12, 2019, the virus database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was taken offline, and with it 22,000 coronavirus samples were gone.

Despite the missing database and reports of whistle blowers and scientists going missing after the outbreak, the World Health Organisation on multiple occasions praised China for its pandemic response.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom said Beijings transparency around the virus was very impressive and beyond words.

Mr Trump slammed the WHO and Dr Tedros, telling Sky News Australia the global health body was influenced and even owned and controlled by the Chinese government.

The WHO is owned and controlled by China. I dropped out of the World Health Organisation. I thought it was ridiculous, he said.

They were late, they were wrong. They were like a mouthpiece for China.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who led the Trump administrations efforts to uncover the truth, said Dr Tedros was deeply beholden to the Chinese regime.

Dr Tedros owed his leadership role at the WHO to deals that were cut with the Chinese Communist Party. Dr Tedros couldn't have been that next leader without the support of the Chinese Communist Party, Mr Pompeo told Sky News Australia.

"They (WHO) weren't willing to demand from the Chinese Communist Party that they be given access. They failed, they failed because of the absence of backbone and resolve and the world is deeply worse off for this.

This was the tragedy, the central tragedy of the end of '19 and the beginning of '20. It became political, not scientific. It became driven by personal incentives and not the dataset.

What Really Happened in Wuhan is available to stream on-demand exclusively on Foxtel. Sharri Marksons book by the same name is available for pre-order now on Booktopia and Amazon.

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Trump suspects gross incompetence led to the COVID-19 Wuhan lab leak - Sky News Australia