When President Donald Trump was pressed by reporters on the administration’s preparation for the pandemic on Thursday, he slammed the media for concentrating coverage on calling the president racist rather than reporting on the success of early measures.
“We were very prepared,” Trump said. “The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly.”
The president referenced the media’s reaction to the White House travel ban on China implemented earlier this year at the onset of the outbreak. Pundits labelled Trump a racist for cutting out travel to the disease-ridden nation.
“I’ll tell you how prepared I was. I called for a ban from people coming in from China, long before anybody,” Trump said, going on to gesture at those in the press briefing room noting that the president was called racist for the decision. “It was many of people in the room. They called me racist and other words because I did that.”
The media has been quick to repeat accusations of racism all week during daily White House briefing updates on the novel Wuhan coronavirus. During Tuesday’s press briefing, Trump was asked to defend referring to the virus as the “Chinese virus” on Twitter the night before.
“I have to call it where it came from. It came from China,” Trump said.
On Wednesday, the president was asked about using the term several more times by reporters.
“Because it comes from China,” Trump said plainly. “It’s not racist at all… It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want it to be accurate.”
In fact, as the president pointed out, China has been peddling propaganda accusing the president of stigmatizing Chinese people by using the term, and has now begun perpetuating a conspiracy theory without evident that the virus actually came from an American military visit to Wuhan.
“We condemn the despicable practice of U.S. politicians eagerly stigmatizing China and Wuhan by association with the novel [Wuhan] coronavirus, disrespecting science and WHO,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang last week.
The woke American media elites have bought into Chinese talking points, and are now attempting to paint the president as a racist, despite the fact that dozens of American journalists connected the virus with China themselves.
Liberal media pundits want you to think referring to the coronavirus as the "Wuhan" or "Chinese" virus is racist.
— MRCTV.org (@mrctv) March 12, 2020
Here's just a few of the times the liberal media did just that. pic.twitter.com/ss3kV5smSP
It’s common practice to match a new virus with a particular population or location where it came from. Some examples include German Measles, West Nile Virus, Guinea Worm, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Lyme Disease, Ross River Fever, Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Valley Fever, Marburg Virus Disease, Norovirus, Zika Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Spanish Flu, Lassa Fever, and Legionnaire’s Disease.