**Italicized text is taken directly from Fox News. All credit is given to Fox News and Marisa Schultz
House Republicans demand accountability for China on coronavirus pandemic: Make them ‘feel pain’ – Marisa Schultz
House Republicans Wednesday called on the Biden administration and congressional Democrats to take more action to hold China accountable for the coronavirus pandemic as they released their GOP roadmap for achieving justice for the American people who suffered tremendous losses from the global pandemic.
The phrase “achieving justice for the American people” presents the U.S. as the hero while painting China as the villain. The broad and overreaching claim that all American people are all seeking justice falsely implies that Americans are all united when in fact many seek to hold the US accountable for its lack of action
The House GOP leadership outlined eight proposals to crack down on China, including new sanctions and visa restrictions on those in China who knowingly covered up information on the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We need to impose sanctions so they feel the pain of what they have done,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Wednesday at a Capitol news conference.
McCarthy was joined by GOP Whip Steve Scalise, Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, and other Republicans who argued that the Chinese Communist Party needs to pay for the more than 600,000 American lives lost during the coronavirus pandemic. The exact origin of the virus is unclear, but President Biden last month ordered an intelligence investigation into the onset of the virus, including any possibility it leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.
The inclusion of numerical statistics such as the above-mentioned serves to exploit dead Americans in order to build anger against the Chinese Communist Party and shift the blame on them, this becomes especially obvious if it is automatically followed by an unproven theory that the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory. Placing these two in the same paragraph makes readers feel as if the 600,000 lives lost were caused by a laboratory-made virus. The purposeful closeness of these two claims serves to imply that the 600,000 deceased were lost due to a bio-weapon.
“The world deserves to know the truth,” said Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We need to find out why because we don’t want this to happen again.”
Democrats, however, said Republicans are trying to “rewrite history” and accused former President Donald Trump and McCarthy of inaction during the last year of the pandemic.
“As Trump gave China a pass on its coronavirus mismanagement, and even praised them for their ‘efforts and transparency,’ the House GOP Leader was silent,” Democratic National Committee spokesperson Adonna Biel said in a statement. “Americans have President Biden and Democrats to thank for leading us through this pandemic, delivering hundreds of millions of vaccinations, and rebuilding the economy, and they’ll see right through the staggering hypocrisy by Kevin McCarthy and the GOP as they try to rewrite history.”
The article does include the opposing argument which is helpful to combat bias and the theme of placing the blame solely on China. Here they do acknowledge the faults of our government.
Other measures the GOP lawmakers proposed in their framework include declassifying intelligence related to the origins of coronavirus, banning so-called “gain of function” research in China, allowing families who lost loved ones to coronavirus to sue China for damages, and relocating the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.
House Republicans have long complained that Democrats weren’t doing enough to investigate China’s role in launching the pandemic and plan their own GOP forum for June 29 to hear from expert witnesses on the origins of coronavirus.
“Complained” delivers a subtle message that Republicans have not done anything substantial, only criticize. Providing examples of actions Republicans have taken against Democrats would help to lay a more accurate representation of the Republican Party.
Written by Chelsea G.