An enterprising Washington Post photographer captured a startling image of President Donald Trumpβs altered news conference script Thursday showing what appeared to be his own handwritten change from βcoronaβ to βChineseβ to form βChinese virus.β
It appeared he used his favourite reality-altering tool: a black Sharpie.
Photographer Jabin Botsford posted the close-up on Twitter amid raging criticism of Trump over his repeated insistence this week on incorrectly calling coronavirus the βChinese virus.β Critics have slammed the implied racism of his tactic, which they say is aimed at blaming a nation and a race of people for the pandemic to distract the American public from the dangerous failings of his own administration to battle the virus.
Trump on Wednesday dismissed the idea that the term βChinese virusβ was in any way racist. βIt comes from China,β he said. βItβs not racist at all. I want to be accurate.β
Itβs not accurate. Trumpβs own top health advisers, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield have said it is inappropriate and inaccurate to label the novel coronavirus as the βChinese virus.β
The correct term is coronavirus (officially SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease COVID-19. Those are the terms international scientists, the World Health Organization, US health officials, physicians and much of the general public use.
A report by Human Rights Watch on Thursday linked Trumpβs use of his term Chinese virus to the fueling of βanti-Chinese sentimentβ as anti-Asian hate crimes soar in the US.
Representative Ted Lieu, in an opinion article in The Washington Post on Wednesday, slammed Trump for βstoking xenophobic panic in a time of crisisβ and shrugging off blame instead of doing his job to help Americans survive the pandemic.
Trump complained on Thursday that China βcould have given us a lot earlier noticeβ about the spread of the disease there, which began in early December. Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization on December 31. It wasnβt until this week that Trump first pledged to ramp up testing in the US, which remains far behind other nations and the current demand.
Trump actually thanked the Chinese in January for their efforts against the illness and for their βtransparency.β