The American media and President Trump’s critics are taking aim at the real threat during the COVID-19 pandemic: the phrase “China Virus.”
In the past week, ever since the president rightly classified the COVID-19 virus as a byproduct of the Chinese government’s corruption and incompetence, the media has denounced him for stoking racism.
Speaking on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called the term “China Virus” offensive while warning “liberals and progressives and people in the media” that the president was intentionally trying to outrage people.
“He wants you to become outraged so you will talk about that instead of talking about tests, so you’ll talk about that instead of talking about ventilators,” Scarborough said. “It’s called a rabbit trail. Yes, it is offensive but, again, we can talk about this in November when the election is in full force. But this is all a distraction.”
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) penned an angry column in The Washington Post accusing the president of “stoking xenophobic panic in a time of crisis.”
“For the president to continue using rhetoric that the Chinese find insulting is not helpful. It is not one country’s problem to solve,” Lieu said. “We are in a worldwide, life-threatening pandemic, and we all need to work together. I wish the president could set aside his xenophobia for the moment while we try to keep Americans from dying.”
NBC News even went as far to employ “experts” to say that President Trump has indeed fueled the flames of racism with his rhetoric.
“I absolutely think that words used by him matter,” said John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “Certainly use of this term by him and others even in the last couple of weeks have led to a noticeable incline in hate incidents that we are seeing. I do think that there is a correlation.”
State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, who represents New York City’s Chinatown, said that Trump has given people something and someone to blame for the problem.
“To continue calling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ is to basically be racist. It’s fueling the xenophobia we’re seeing all over our districts,” she said. “When people already fear something, they now have something to blame for it.”
“There have been people standing there, shouting at me, ‘corona, corona, corona,'” she later added. “People have called my office saying I eat bats.”
While nobody has endorsed the racism that some Asian Americans are experiencing right now, the term “China Virus” is indeed an accurate term because it not only originated in China but became a global pandemic due to the government of China’s response to the situation. As Victor Davis Hanson said on Wednesday, China’s botched response may have ruined the country’s international brand as a cutting-edge mover and shaker.
“[China] knew that that virus was not only epidemic but infectious and could be deadly to older people. They didn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell us. In fact, they did something far worse — they accused us of causing it and then they threatened to cut off supplies of medical needs and pharmaceuticals,” Hanson said.
Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told the Washington Times that “criminal negligence and incompetence” created the crisis Americans are enduring now.
“Criminal negligence and incompetence by China’s communist regime,” Fleitz said. “It withheld information about this disease for weeks and refused to cooperate with international health officials.”
“Beijing also failed to close its border or limit travel. And the government refused to close the animal wet markets, which are a known source of serious diseases that spread to humans,” he added. “And now this corrupt regime is trying to blame the United States for its criminal negligence and incompetence.”