This is a fair question. It's also a good one to pose to a virologist like @angie_rasmussen rather than only an administration source.

Bottom line is we can't know for sure how the virus made the jump until it's found in nature, which hasn't happened yet. https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1250411761200779264

That's not unusual - there are numerous human viruses for which we haven't ID'ed a definitive animal host reservoir, or intermediary. Even for Ebola, which has been around for 40+ years, we haven't definitively ID'ed the reservoir. https://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/stories-features/global-stories/ebola-reservoir-study.html

For COVID, there's a case for pangolins but it hasn't been proven (and can't be til ID'ed in one). There's a case for bats (but - same). Similar, but not identical, coronaviruses have been found in both.

So there are plenty of ways one could imagine the virus reaching Wuhan.

People interact with potential host and intermediary animals in *a lot* of different ways and places, in China and the region.

And people move around a lot, and can carry the virus, or a virus-carrying animal, with them. It's not a binary choice between the market or the lab.

Could be a trader trafficking animals from Yunnan province was exposed there and went to Wuhan. Could be it jumped via different pangolins (which are present in Yunnan) and they carried it. Could be a different intermediary animal not yet found. Or something else entirely.

The point is that the biology shows a lot of remaining uncertainty, and leaves open a range of plausible explanations that don't involve a lab spillover. And there is ample circumstantial evidence indicating a lab spillover is unlikely (albeit not impossible).

So to portray lab spillover as the primary plausible scenario is at best incomplete, at worst misleading. Especially when sourcing the claim to an administration official with an obvious axe to grind, and leaving the alternate scenarios unmentioned, much less explored.

Or to put this all much more simply: