Concerns over reporter at White House briefing with ties to China

Republicans raised alarms after a reporter with links to the Chinese propaganda apparatus appeared at a White House briefing and questioned President Trump over Beijing’s efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report.

Several lawmakers feared the reporter from Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV was spreading propaganda in the White House and called for a response, Fox News reported Tuesday.

“Only last week, there were multiple flights coming from China full of medical supplies,” the reporter asked the president at Monday’s briefing. “Companies like Huawei and Alibaba have been donating to the United States, like 1.5 million N95 masks and also a lot of medical gloves, and much more medical supplies.”

“Sounds like a statement more than a question,” Trump responded.

The reporter asked Trump if he was willing to work “directly” with China, prompting the president to ask her if she was working with China.

The reporter said she worked for Hong Kong Phoenix TV and explained that it’s a “privately owned company.”

Immediately people began pointing out Phoenix TV’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Hoover Institution, in a report, said the “quasi official Phoenix TV” is linked to the People’s Republic of China’s “Ministry of State Security” and has a “substantial presence on all major social media platforms in the United States.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was among GOP lawmakers raising the alarm about Phoenix TV.

“Phoenix TV has been waging information warfare in the US for yrs,” he wrote on Twitter. “They are nominally private but actually state owned. In 2018 I led effort to block them from using cutouts to spread propaganda. MSM should NEVER have given them seat at WH press conference.”

“Why is an outlet with such close ties to Communist China allowed in the White House briefing room?” asked Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) on Twitter.

Cruz, in a Twitter thread, laid out Phoenix TV’s ties to China and concluded: “So to recap, the WH Correspondents Assoc gave a seat at the WH press briefing to an employee of the Chinese Communist govt, to ask globally televised Qs to POTUS, at the same time China is waging a propaganda campaign to hide their culpability & coverup of the Wuhan virus?!?”

The questions come after the White House Correspondents’ Association denied a seat at the briefings to the conservative One America News Network after one of its reporters violated social distancing guidelines.

*story by New York Post