COVID-19’s Role in Trump’s 2020 Campaign
Science be damned, it’s self-interest and politics that matter in the White House these days. What could be the greatest danger to the re-election of Donald J. Trump is being leveraged to make it into an asset.
Time will tell if this is a good idea.
When his advisers typed “Coronavirus” into a speech the President was to give, he whipped out his sharpie to make sure the message was clear.
The Trump administration and its friends in the media are undertaking an effort to rebrand COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan Virus.”
While health professionals have explained time and again the dangers these racist characterizations pose, the terms have become ubiquitous in right wing circles.
The World Health Organization chose COVID-19 as a “clinical and nondescript” name in order to avoid “stigmatization of the place from which it originated.”
For the Trump re-election effort, racism is at the core of its strategy to aggravate divisions among the American people, leverage uncertainty, and reinforce its nationalist agenda. Anybody naive enough to buy the “well, that’s where it came from argument” is obviously existing in a white-only bubble.
And, in the end, they’re hoping to use the terms to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, since the GOP wasted their “socialist” ammunition on Senator Bernie Sanders.
Media Matters has provided an impressive list of this racism (and denial, which actually works to spread the concept) in action:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson complained that media “talking heads have wasted hours upon valuable hours yammering on … about how it's racist to tie the coronavirus to China, where it came from. Please.”
Right-wing website The Federalist has now taken to frequently calling coronavirus the “Wuhan virus” in headlines and articles.
The Federalist also published an article titled “No, Calling Covid-19 ‘Chinese Virus’ Is Not Racist.”
The Daily Caller covered comments from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pointing out that it is racist to avoid eating Chinese food in the wake of coronavirus.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh argued that reactions to the coronavirus are not racist because “Chinese is not a race. You can’t be racist against Chinese people.”
On Hannity, Fox News contributor Dan Bongino complained that media figures are calling out racism around labeling the disease the “Wuhan virus,” calling it “phenomenal” and “a new low.”
The Washington Times wrote an article parroting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) attacking the media for “its 'Wuhan' word-policing” over coronavirus.
The Daily Wire also covered Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, claiming that “one of the reasons that the political Left does not want the coronavirus to be called something that identifies that it came from China is that it limits their ability to politicize anything bad that happens in the U.S. and use it as a weapon to attack President Donald Trump.”
On Fox & Friends, Fox Business’ Charles Payne complained that people can’t call coronavirus “the Wuhan coronavirus” without being criticized, declaring, “That’s the birthplace of it, yes, so that’s the name of it.”
Human Events’ Ian Miles Cheong claimed that efforts to call out the “Wuhan virus” branding as wrong is a narrative “put forth by the Chinese government to absolve them of any responsibility for letting the outbreak spread,” accusing the media of “propagating it.”
Right-wing troll James Woods, who Trump has recently promoted on Twitter, declared that the virus “is a Chinese virus,” adding that “emotional liberals hate facts.”
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles bluntly tweeted, “It's called the Wuhan virus.”
American Greatness senior fellow Ned Ryun said that “anyone who refuses to call this the Wuhan Virus or Chinese Coronavirus is helping the Communists’ attempts to rewrite history.”
Brigitte Gabriel, founder of anti-Muslim group ACT for America, wrote, “The ‘WUHAN Virus’ is NOT a racist name” seven times in one tweet.
Right-wing podcast host Buck Sexton tweeted that “there’s no good faith argument that its racist” to stigmatize the virus, adding that “people who insist otherwise are being ignorant and childish.”
National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote that “China deserves to be connected to the virus that it loosed on the world.”
USA Today Deputy Editor David Mastio, previously a founding editorial page editor for the conservative Washington Examiner and senior editor for online opinion at The Washington Times, published an op-ed headlined “No, calling the novel coronavirus the ‘Wuhan virus’ is not racist.”
Drawing from the (very) deep well of conspiracies making the rounds on the internet, right wing talking heads like Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro have alluded to an imaginary Chinese bio weapons lab that’s unleashed the virus on the world.
Tying it all together, the Trump campaign is mailing letters to supporters saying critics of the president --and specifically former Vice President Joe Biden--are doing the bidding of the Chinese government.
From CNN:
The email, which comes as Trump has stepped up his efforts to scapegoat China for coronavirus, sought to attack Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for "siding with the Chinese" amid disinformation about the virus. But it also neglected to account for Trump's new tone toward China after initially praising President Xi Jinping as the virus spread.
The Trump campaign cited Biden's criticism of Trump calling the pandemic a "foreign virus" as "(falling) back on xenophobia" and Biden adviser Ron Klain's praise for China's government for quickly building hospitals as evidence of Biden siding with China. Many public health experts have criticized Trump's labeling of the virus as "Chinese."
The campaign also cited comments from Biden the same day Trump announced China travel restrictions as evidence the former vice president "sided with China." Biden did not specifically note the restrictions, but called out the President's "record of hysteria and xenophobia, hysterical xenophobia, and fear mongering" during a speech to supporters. Trump has repeatedly said that decision saved American lives.
Dovetailing into these actions, the White House launched a communications plan across multiple federal agencies focusing on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating a global pandemic.
From the Daily Beast:
The cable was disseminated to officials at a time when the administration is engrossed in a communications battle around how to disseminate the flow of crucial health information to the American public while at the same time deflecting criticism that the White House was unprepared for the pandemic and that President Trump is at odds with members of his coronavirus task force.
One of the results of those internal deliberations appears to be a renewed focus on underscoring China’s missteps. Two U.S. officials working on the administration’s coronavirus response said the White House is pushing federal agencies to stick closely to the national security council’s talking points, especially when senior officials take to the podium, to ensure continuity with President Trump.
“These talking points are all anyone is really talking about right now,” one official said. “Everything is about China. We’re being told to try and get this messaging out in any way possible, including press conferences and television appearances.”
As the Trump administration works on fomenting anger at China --mostly for domestic purposes-- the Beijing government is hard at work with its own public relation campaign designed to counter earlier criticisms of its handling of the outbreaks and take advantage of the void created internationally by the America First strategy.
From Joe Penney, writing at the Intercept:
Yet now that the situation in China appears to have stabilized, the country is positioning itself at the head of the global response to Covid-19, adopting a unique leadership position that may alter global power relations, despite the biggest shock to its industrial output and economy in recent history and its coverup in Wuhan at the beginning of the crisis.
Western Europe and the U.S. are struggling under the weight of the crisis, with cases rising exponentially every day and higher death rates in Italy than anywhere else. China’s private and public sectors are filling in gaps in equipment where other states are failing, although the spread of the disease is such that demand for those materials might quickly outpace China’s supply. The government and Jack Ma, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder of the Alibaba Group, have already sent doctors and medical supplies to France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Iran, Iraq, the Philippines, and the United States. Chinese citizens living abroad are flying home in large numbers to avoid catastrophic health failures elsewhere. In Massachusetts, a Chinese woman tried and failed to be tested three times for Covid-19 before flying back home to be tested and treated.
“The Chinese government has been trying to project Chinese state power beyond its borders and establish China as a global leader, not dissimilar to what the U.S. government has been doing for the better part of a century, and the distribution of medical aid is part of this mission,” said Dr. Yangyang Cheng, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University who writes the science and China column for SupChina.
***
Stop the spread graphic
****
Today's administration priority:
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com