A single word scrawled in black marker stood out among the prepared remarks President Trump planned to deliver during Thursday’s White House press briefing on the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic.
In the president’s notes, “Corona” had been crossed out and replaced with “Chinese.”
The last-minute edit was captured in photos taken by The Washington Post’s Jabin Botsford and marks the latest instance of Trump deliberately calling the novel virus a name that has been frowned upon by critics, who say its usage could lead to increased discrimination and racism toward Asian Americans — a marginalized group with a long history of being scapegoated amid public health crises.
“It’s racist and it creates xenophobia,” Harvey Dong, a lecturer in Asian American and Asian diaspora studies with the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
Scores of Asian Americans nationwide have already reported being targeted in verbal and physical attacks linked to coronavirus fears. Meanwhile, conservative media figures and Republican leaders have ignored guidances from health officials urging people to avoid talking about the virus in nonneutral terms, peppering their TV hits and social media posts with phrases such as “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese coronavirus.”
“Those statements are, in my mind, a game changer,” said Gilbert Gee, a professor with UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. “Now, they’ve basically made it okay to have anti-Asian bias.”
Charissa Cheah, who is leading a study examining coronavirus-related discrimination against Chinese Americans, called the language “reckless and irresponsible.” A leader, Cheah said, is “someone that sets the climate for what’s acceptable or not acceptable.”