Trump blamed China rather than his own administration for the pandemic

Evidence

Trump and many of his Republican surrogates or supporters repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as “the China Virus” or “the Kung-Flu” and suggested that the virus had either escaped or been deliberately released from a Chinese lab. In other words, the Trump administration was not to blame for the virus; China was. Trump would use the expression “Chinese virus” more than 20 times just in the latter half of March. A photographer snapped a picture of Trump’s notes for speech in which he’d crossed out the word “Corona” and inserted “Chinese.” Other times, Christian nationalist commentators curiously accused Mexican immigrants of worsening the pandemic, despite the fact that Mexico had still been largely untouched by COVID-19 at that time. On March 10, 2020, when Mexico had seven total reported cases of COVID-19, Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA and former director of the now-defunct Falkirk Center at Liberty University, tweeted that “Now, more than ever, we need the wall. With China Virus spreading across the globe, the US stands a chance if we can control of [sic] our borders.” Trump reposted the tweet and added the comment, “Going up fast. We need the Wall more than ever.” — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scapegoating dynamics seen throughout American history as in the nativism literature (Higham’s Strangers in the Land) and crisis bigotry patterns. — connects to: Trump scapegoated minorities to deflect COVID-19 blame — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 127

Broader Connections

• Trump scapegoated minorities to deflect COVID-19 blame #exemplifies (0.85) — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 127