deflect

#USCIS According to the New York Times, Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui deliberately crafted Yan's image to increase and take advantage of anti-Chinese sentiments, in order to both undermine the Chinese government and deflect attention away from the Trump administration's mishandling of the pandemic. These fake news stories still resonate today. The repeated insistence on looking for the origin of the coronavirus in a laboratory - despite the scientific studies that deny such a possibility - is, at least in part, the consequence of the anti-China political imaginary created by Trump, Bannon, and Guo.