President Donald Trump has used a racist term several times in as many days — three times on Wednesday alone — in place of the name of the current pandemic disease sweeping across the nation.
While the nation struggles to deal with the health and economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis, Trump has made a not-so-veiled attempted to rebrand the name of the disease, calling it the “Chinese Virus” on at least five occasions in the past three days on Twitter, according to the Trump Twitter Archive.
On Wednesday morning, he used the decidedly racist term on three occasions.
In one tweet, for example, Trump promised aid for those in the service industry, slipping the wording in toward the end of his statement.
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For the people that are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, for instance the shutting down of hotels, bars and restaurants, money will soon be coming to you. The onslaught of the Chinese Virus is not your fault! Will be stronger than ever!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2020
“For the people that are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, for instance the shutting down of hotels, bars and restaurants, money will soon be coming to you,” Trump wrote. “The onslaught of the Chinese Virus is not your fault!”
In another tweet a half-hour later, Trump announced he would be holding a news conference “to discuss very important news from the FDA concerning the Chinese Virus.”
Finally, in his most recent tweet using the racist term (as of press time), Trump used the term to defend himself against accusations that he had not taken seriously the gravity of the situation surrounding the coronavirus global pandemic.
I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the “borders” from China – against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2020
“I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning,” Trump said, in spite of overwhelming evidence of the opposite being true — including describing Democrats’ criticisms of his nonchalant way of handling the disease last month as a “hoax.”
Diseases and other ailments do not, of course, have nationalities — and describing coronavirus as “Chinese” is an inappropriate thing to do, according to standards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
” Fear and anxiety can lead to social stigma, for example, towards
Chinese or other Asian Americans or people who were in quarantine,’ the CDC wrote in a statement.
“Stigma is discrimination,” the CDC adds, warning that “Stigma hurts everyone by creating more fear or anger towards ordinary people instead of the disease that is causing the problem.”
So why might Trump be using the term so frequently? It may be that he wants to put the blame for his poor response to the disease elsewhere.
Early polling data from last month actually found a majority of Americans happy with his response, but recent numbers demonstrate the country is split, with a plurality saying they are not happy with his job performance as of late with regards to the spread of COVID-19.
The Anti-Defamation League has been tracking racist memes and online activity directed toward Asian communities in reaction to the outbreak. https://t.co/HPQENS7ao4
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 18, 2020
That being the case, Trump may believe it behooves him to find another way to make the spread of coronavirus not seem like it’s the fault of his mismanagement, but rather the fault of the country it supposedly originated from.
Whether there is an ulterior motive to Trump’s use of the term or not, calling coronavirus the “Chinese Virus” is wrong and dangerous — as evidenced by a rise in the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country.
Chris Walker is a freelance journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin, who focuses on news, politics, and analysis of world events. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, since 2005 Chris has reported on workers’ rights protests in Wisconsin, opined on four separate presidential elections and written on a number of other political subjects for a variety of national online publications.
