Fauci to Appear before Senate Committee
HOLMES: Welcome back. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House Coronavirus Task Force is to testify before a committee in the Republican-led Senate on May 12th. That is what an aide to the committee chairman is telling CNN. But earlier we learned the White House is blocking Fauci from testifying next week before a committee in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. U.S. lawmakers are gearing up for an oversight battle. Fauci, of course, a key figure. He has repeatedly distanced himself from how the Trump administration has been framing the response to this pandemic. The White House has been blaming a lot of things for the virus spread; in particular, China, even pushing the theory that it all started in a lab in Wuhan. But Chinese officials are pushing back and accusing the Trump administration of trying to deflect blame for its own handling of the pandemic, as CNN's David Culver reports.</s>DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chinese state-run media now ramping up its propaganda against the United States, taking direct aim at secretary of state Mike Pompeo. This week, a near daily CCTV commentary attacks Pompeo for calling out China's mishandling of the coronavirus. One saying, he is turning himself to be the enemy of humankind by spreading a political virus. On Thursday, the peoples daily, the official newspaper for China's Communist Party, ran an editorial saying that Pompeo's rhetoric makes the U.S. look like it is dealing with a colossal moral deficit. Government controlled Xinhua tweeted an animation further mocking the U.S' blaming of China and portraying it as hypocritical.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you listening to yourselves?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are always correct, even though we contradict ourselves.</s>CULVER (voice-over): In the shadows of the coronavirus outbreak, the war of words is creating a deepening rift between the U.S. and China.</s>TRUMP: China is a very sophisticated country and they could've contained it, they were either unable to or they chose not to. And the world is suffering greatly.</s>CULVER (voice-over): It is a change from Donald Trump's more sympathetic tone, expressed repeatedly over the past few months.</s>TRUMP: Look, I know President Xi loves the people of China, he loves this country and he is doing a very good job with a very, very tough situation.</s>CULVER (voice-over): While still not directly criticizing President Xi Jinping, President Trump is increasingly criticizing China for the virus' devastating and deadly spread, echoing secretary of state Mike Pompeo's hardline stance.</s>MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We know it started in Wuhan, China, we don't know from where it started. And in spite of our best efforts to get experts on the ground, they continue to hide and obfuscate. That is wrong and it poses a threat to the world. This is classic Communist disinformation. This is what Communists do.</s>CULVER (voice-over): The White House now further pushing the origin theory that the virus started in a Wuhan laboratory. Last week, CNN returned to Wuhan post lockdown, traveled to the lab in question, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We captured a few images from the exterior of the gated campus. Chinese officials dismiss allegations that it started here. In a statement Thursday from the U.S. office of the acting Director of National Intelligence, said that it concluded the coronavirus was not manmade or genetically modified but noted it was still evaluating theories linking to the outbreak to the lab. CNN's early reporting of this revealed that China's covering up and silencing of whistleblowers. Our reports put into question China's official number of cases, which have been revised repeatedly and is widely believed to be vastly under reported.</s>CULVER: However, China believes that the U.S. and the Trump administration in particular is trying to deflect for its lack of preparedness in battling this virus in the United States. Until you have this heated rhetoric, this increased blame and the world's two largest economies no longer looking at international collaboration but rather, in the midst of this animosity filled face off -- David Culver, CNN, Shanghai.</s>HOLMES: Thousands of workers at food processing plants across the U.S. have tested positive for coronavirus. How do you keep workers in these places safe while also preventing a food shortage? We will discuss when we come back.