US Senator: China must be severely’ punished

China must be “severely” punished for the 16,000 Americans that have died as a result of the coronavirus that originated in China, said US Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News.

“The first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we, we don’t blame Trump, we blame China,” Graham said. “The Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. It’s the Chinese government and the way they behave that led to this pandemic. This is the third one to come out of China.”

“I want to make our response to this so overwhelming that China will change its behavior,” Graham continued. “I want to get the medical supply chain back into the United States. I want to [start] canceling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us, not us paying China. So I think you will see a bipartisan pushback against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.”

More than 500,000 people contracted coronavirus, while over 18,000 have died from COVID-19 complications in the US, according to the recent data released by Johns Hopkins University.