NIH facing scrutiny over origins of COVID-19 as documents suggest lab leak theory was suppressed
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Podcast giant Joe Rogan and "Real Time" host Bill Maher railed against those who dismissed the Wuhan lab-leak theory in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday's installment of "The Joe Rogan Experience," the two comedians slammed the idea of policing thought, prompting Maher to cite "our friend" Elon Musk's growing involvement with Twitter, which he himself endorsed on Friday, suspecting the Tesla CEO will combat censorship and defend free speech.
"It wasn't cool that [Twitter] didn't allow the lab-leak theory to be talked about," Maher said. "For months, you couldn't even mention it. And that is certainly something that was open to question. I mean, it was like, to me the very kind of issue that if Twitter was really doing the job it should- would be a healthy forum for people to go back and forth and say, 'Well, here's why I think COVID probably came from bats because A, B and C' and then, 'Well, but you know, there was this lab in Wuhan that was studying coronaviruses and somebody could have walked out with it on their shoe. Can't we even look into that?' For Twitter to take that off, that to me was a huge red flag."
Bill Maher appears on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on September 15, 2021. (Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty Images) (Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty Images)
"It's crazy," Rogan reacted. "It was crazy because it wasn't resolved. It just wasn't resolved. It wasn't resolved amongst virologists… there was no way they could know."
"Even the Biden administration admits that… Redfield, the former head of the CDC firmly believes that it was in a lab, but again, that becomes the conservative view. For what f---ing reason, why- I can't even follow the logic of why we pick, 'Okay, if you think it came from the wet markets, you're a Democrat. And if you think it came out of the lab, you're a Republican.' It's like what the f--- does it have to do with a Republican or Democrat?"
"It's the same as everything. It's just f---in' pure tribalism," Rogan said. "The Democrats that do think it came out of a lab [whispers] tell you like this, they tell you like this."
"Really?" a surprised Maher asked.
"Yeah, they're careful," Rogan said. "They cover the mic on their phones."
Maher was amazed that the subject of the Wuhan lab-leak theory was "that toxic," to which Rogan replied, "100%."
Podcast giant Joe Rogan. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images | REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo/File Photo)
The HBO star suspected the left's fear of giving credence to the lab-leak theory was the thought of it being "racist."
"The lab that the White people funded?" Rogan quipped.
"It seems it would be much more racist to think it came out of eating that primitive, f---in' crazy food that you're eating in the wet market," Maher chuckled. "You're reading the ‘chicken of the cave’… It's just silly. It's just silly. It's a scientific issue. It should have no political dimension at all!"
"Either you want to look at things for what they really are or you have this ideological-like box that your ideas have to live in. And if you say it came from a lab, you're a Trump supporter. You hate democracy. You hate gays. You can, like stuff it in a box like that. It gets weird with certain subjects," Rogan later said.
Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
"Yeah, I mean, this one got somehow balled up with anti-Asian racism," Maher told Rogan. "Trump, of course, always never finds any issue that he can't make worse. I mean, he saw an opportunity here as he usually does to cater, I think and pander to his base, who some of whom definitely are racist and some of whom definitely like it when he does things like that."
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Maher continued, "But I don't have any objection to calling it the ‘Wuhan virus’ because every virus has been named after the place it came from. I mean, you can't almost not name a virus that is not named after where it came from… That's, again, one of those common-sense things that it's not a Republican point of view, that's just the world. Not everything is racial. "
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