Bill Gates praised China's COVID response, trashed America's, then had his words immediately used by Chinese propagandists

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently defended the communist Chinese government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that they "did a lot of things right at the beginning." As for America's response to the virus — he said that it was "particularly poor."

His stunning comments came during an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN Sunday.

What did he say?

"How would you respond to the charge that the Chinese covered this up, they essentially deceived the rest of the world, and as a result, they should be held in someway responsible for this?" Zakaria asked Gates during the interview.

"Well, I don't think that's a timely thing because it doesn't affect how we act today. China did a lot of things right at the beginning," Gates said in response. "Like any country where a virus first shows up, they can look back and see where they missed some things."

"Some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place and they avoided the incredible economic pain, and it's sad that even the U.S., that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly," Gates went on to claim.

Gates went on to call criticisms of China "a distraction."

That's not right at all

Gates seems to have forgotten that Chinese authorities have been lying about the virus since the start of the outbreak late last year in Wuhan.

They censured and reprimanded early whistleblowers who sought to inform the public about the dangers of a novel coronavirus spreading within Wuhan. Health care workers were silenced and citizen journalists went missing. It wasn't until December 31 that China finally reported the virus to the country's World Health Organization office.

Officials claimed that the outbreak started in a Wuhan wet market where bats were sold, but is becoming more and more likely that the virus accidentally originated in a Wuhan virology lab. Officials claimed for weeks that the virus could not spread between humans despite very early evidence of human-to-human transmission. For at least 6 key days, they peddled the lies.

Even after the virus spread worldwide, the Chinese government continued to lie about the extent of the outbreak within its own country. Officials have gone so far as to blame the U.S. for the pandemic, claiming that the U.S. military developed the virus and infected China and Europe.

Chinese state propaganda

Almost immediately after the interview, Gates' remarks in defense of China were promoted by Chinese state propagandists.

Chen Weihua, China Daily's European Union bureau chief, posted the clip on Twitter, writing, "Bill Gates blasts Trump's blame game on China as a distraction."

(H/T: The Daily Wire)