Lindsey Graham Lights Up China and Its Wet Markets: 'Stop Eating Bats!'

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020. President Donald Trump’s legal team prepared to wrap up arguments in his impeachment trial Tuesday as Senate Republicans wrestled with whether to allow witnesses, including John Bolton who appeared ready to contradict a key Trump claim. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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On Friday night, North Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham had a message you don’t hear too often: Stop eating bats.

If that’s something you’ve needed to hear, I’m glad I could pass it along. But the congressman was directing it toward China and — I suppose — other countries with tastes outside of what you’ll find at Applebees.

Speaking on Fox News program The Story with Martha MacCallum, Lindsey’s remarks were in response to wet markets having been reopened in some parts of China, despite their notable link to the coronavirus and other pandemics.

Graham noted the danger — and the grossness:

“These wet markets in China, people eat bats, and they eat monkeys. And bats and monkeys — at least bats, for sure — carry this kind of virus.”

Host Martha had brought up the purported presence of a laboratory near the Wuhan market, where researchers studied viruses in bats.

As observed by Lindsey, when it comes to dishing out diseases, those markets have cooked up some humdingers:

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“This is where ebola came from, this is where the SARS came from, and this lab may be 300 yards away from the wet market in China, where they test bats for coronavirus infection. But people literally eating bats 300 yards down the road. And for this to continue is an outrage, and Dr. Fauci said the world should ostracize every country that allows exotic animals like monkeys and bats to be intermingled with the food supply and near humans.”

It’s not a very good record:

“This’ll be the third pandemic to come out of these wet markets in China.”

The senator pointed out that wet markets can be found in southeast Asia and Africa as well. But he fingered “some guy” in China:

“Some guy in China started all of this, and it most likely came from a wet market. Just remember what I said. Some guy in China started this, and we’ve got to stop this stuff in China.”

About the markets getting back to business, Lindsey asked a basic — and, I think, good — question:

“How many times are we going to go through this routine?”

The way he sees it, we’ve gotta stop the animal-to-human transmission of terrible disease. And it’s a start to stop eating certain things.

“Well, 16% of all deaths in the world are infectious diseases. And about 60% of them come from animal-to-human transmission. … [P]eople eat cats and dogs throughout the world as part of their diet. We need to stop that. It’s the 21st century.”

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Yes. Let’s.

Graham also slammed remarks by Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director for the World Health Organization.

Martha played a clip of Michael issuing a warning:

“I think we need to be very careful…not to be profiling certain parts of the world as being uncooperative and non-transparent. We need to be balanced in that. And we need to recognize that systems under pressure find it hard to share everything on a minute-to-minute basis.”

Lindsey was direct:

“That’s ridiculous when it comes to China. They have a pattern of withholding information from their own citizens. … No, they underreported this. And China has a bad history.”

The North Carolinian announced that Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, Sen. Cory Booker, and he are going to write to the WHO and Chinese ambassador, asking them to shut down the markets.

It’s a germfest:

“[W]e have wet markets where wild, exotic animals are being slaughtered and consumed on the same premises as chicken and pork. And it gets into the stream of the animals, and eventually human beings.”

He also stated what he’d encourage Trump to tell Chinese President Xi Jinping:

“[C]rack down on bringing exotic and wild animals into these wet markets where they contaminate the food supply in human beings. Bats carry this stuff. And they literally eat bats. Stop eating bats.”

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Always good advice.

Well, unless you’re these guys:

-ALEX

 

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