Mike Pompeo
Mike PompeoReuters

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was interviewed yesterday on "Fox & Friends" on Fox News and used the opportunity to hit back at Chinese claims that the United States is trying to deflect its failure to deal with the epidemic by blaming China for causing it.

"What the Chinese Communist Party did here, in not preventing the spread of this around the world, they are responsible for," Pompeo said. "America needs to hold them accountable. I’ve been heartened to see Australia, other countries joining this, demanding an investigation, because while we know this started in Wuhan, China, we don’t yet know [exactly] from where it started.

"And in spite of our best efforts to get experts on the ground, they continue to try and hide and obfuscate. That’s wrong, it continues to pose a threat to the world, and we all need to get to the bottom of what actually happened here, not only for the current instance but to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. There are still many labs operating inside of China today, and the world needs to know that we’re not going to see a repeat of this in the days and weeks and months ahead."

In comments directed at suggestions that Chinese company Huawei should not be granted contracts to build 5-G infrastructure, Pompeo said, "We not only have an opportunity, we have an obligation to get this right, to unite the freedom-loving nations, likeminded countries around the world, to make sure that it is not a communist regime that controls our infrastructure."