Newt Gingrich on Fox News Channel's America's Newsroom | May 28, 2021

NEWT:

Look, we're in a period where you have common sense, and you have technicalities. Common sense is this was a manufactured virus. It almost certainly came out of Wuhan. The burden ought to be on China. The Chinese have lied to the World Health Organization, they've lied to the planet. They've now closed down the opportunity to have any kind of serious investigation.

This was originally called the Wuhan virus or Chinese virus. That's what it is. And I think that it's a sad story that for over a year the western world was basically lied to by China and accepted it. And people who said this is a laboratory they were ridiculed. And I think now you are beginning to find out the weight of evidence is overwhelming in part because technically a disease which comes through an animal into a human evolves at a much slower rate. This was a very rapid I think deliberately engineered disease probably escaped because of clumsiness or sloppiness, probably not a deliberate effort but nonetheless China is responsible for the death of millions for economic crisis across the planet for disrupting the entire world system and the Chinese ought to be held accountable.

NEWT:

What we ought to do I think is establish a 30 or 40% extra tariff on all Chinese goods. Put that money into a fund to pay off the families. Allow the families to sue just like you would for any kind of industrial problem. We have all seen the commercials if you ever had ‘x’ call the law firm.

We out to say we'll charge the Chinese an extra tariff for being bad actors and keep the tariff on until we raise enough money to pay off every American family. The rest of the world should take note of that, and they should do the same thing. Now XI would be facing a real problem because his export machine that keeps his economy rolling would be breaking. And he would have a real domestic problem not just a bunch of words.

NEWT:

Well, this administration wants to somehow find a way to be Xi Jinping’s friend, not enemy. I doubt very much if President Biden is going to allow the American people to know what the American intelligence community already knows. I would be very surprised.