The Real Reason Trump Started Calling the Virus “Chinese”

From a high-resolution photograph of Donald Trump’s printed-out remarks for his Thursday press conference, we know two things: the first is that Trump’s speech was printed out for him in a huge font and protected by a plastic page protector. The second was that the visible page of the speech was unmarked except in one place: Where the word “Corona” in “Corona Virus” (two words) had been crossed out with a Sharpie and replaced with a word in distinctive penmanship printed in all caps: CHINESE.

It was clear Trump had replaced the accepted shorthand for the COVID-19 virus with another that would blame another country for the pandemic while inflaming antipathy against the “Chinese” and (because ethnic hatreds aren’t especially discerning) Asians in general.

And he’d done so quite deliberately.

This was a new development. Trump had previously referred to the pandemic as “the coronavirus.” So what changed? The answer is obvious: People familiar with Trump’s limited but effective toolbox will recognize by now that the turn to racism is a sign of Trumpian distress. It means that Trump—who hasn’t been able to hold rallies amid his adoring fans—is feeling not just insecure but trapped. He thought the coronavirus was one more narrative he could control. He couldn’t. And so, perhaps sometime around March 16, when he first used the phrase “Chinese Virus” on Twitter himself, it became clear that the president was ready to embrace an ugly construction Mike Pompeo and others had earlier tried to mainstream.