Editor's Note:

Lee Camp, host of RT America, seeks every possible chance to reveal the hypocrisy of the US government in his satirical program Redacted Night, offering a perspective different from that of American corporate media outlets. As a media person, how does he view the origins-tracing of the coronavirus advocated by US politicians and media? What factors affect US mainstream media? How does he feel as an American working in Washington for a Russian media outlet? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen talked to Camp via video in her talk show Insight Talk.  

This is the first of a four-part interview. Click here to read the second, here to read the third, and here to read the fourth. 

GT's Wang Wenwen interviews Lee Camp.

GT: In your June program, you criticized the Democrats for picking up the COVID-19 lab leak theory. You said the US media will not report that US biolabs use US citizens as lab rats. There are many doubts concerning Fort Detrick. Do you support opening Fort Detrick for investigations?

Camp: I'm all for investigations as long as they can be unbiased. I don't think that really any country should investigate themselves and then say, "Look, we did nothing wrong!" because that is never going to be liable in a lot of people's eyes. So really, it should be international observers that we can all agree on. And in a perfect world, these would be easy to find and easy to set up so that we have unbiased people looking at these things scientifically.

I'm not opposed to investigations. The problem is, you have the US pointing to investigations that the US funded and created. Like with the genocide accusations, the US points to other US agencies and says, "Look what we found!" And it turns out it's just the same guy with a different mask on, saying he found something. You can't really take that style as accurate.

GT: CNN once reported facts of China's anti-epidemic results and the CPC's July 1 centennial celebrations, and was accused of China propaganda by Fox News and Republicans. Like other mainstream US media, CNN doesn't have a favorable view of China. What factors affect US mainstream media like CNN?

Camp: You had an interesting dynamic when Trump was still in office, at times, CNN and Fox News, despite both being our corporate media, and being on opposite sides of an issue. And what that had to do with was at that time, CNN saw it as beneficial, and much of the ruling class in America saw it as beneficial, to go against any Trump points or ideology. Because Trump was pushing the China lab leak theory, pushing those kinds of racist ideas like the "China did this to us" idea. CNN went against that because they were against Trump ideology. And so CNN at that time was willing to question those things like you mentioned and also to celebrate China succeeding against the pandemic in many ways.

But then once Biden got into office, once Trump is not the issue, now you've seen a reversal where CNN is now pushing the lab leak conspiracy and anti-China stories, because they no longer feel the need to go against Trump talking points and ideas. So it served their purpose at the time when you did have a unique situation in America for a bit there where Trump was actually something that was outside the standard American ruling class. Now he's still part of the ruling class. He's still a billionaire. He still agrees with corporate America for the most part. So it wasn't that far outside of the American ruling class but he was a slight offshoot of the American ruling class. And so you had a kind of going against each other in terms of CNN and Fox News. That has now largely stopped. They are now agreeing on all of these anti-China, anti-Iran and anti-Cuba propagandas.