Image via Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com
President Donald Trump has been known to refer to the
novel coronavirus by other names, such as the “
China Virus,” “Chinese Virus,” and “Kung Flu.” These remarks have been decried as insensitive, but that hasn’t stopped him from using them.
“It comes from China,” the president
responded in March. “It’s not racist at all. I want to be accurate.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supposed that, by that logic, she could also give the coronavirus a nickname based on the apparent cause of how dangerously the virus has been spreading. She now calls the coronavirus the “Trump Virus.”
The label was uttered on several occasions during her interview with
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, as Pelosi said Trump was to blame for the spike of COVID-19 infections across the United States.
“It is a pandemic that has gotten worse before it will get better because of his inaction,” she lamented. “And in fact, clearly, it is the Trump Virus.”
Pelosi chastised the Trump administration’s delayed and seemingly indifferent response to the coronavirus. “If he had said months ago, ‘Let’s wear masks, let’s socially distance instead of having rallies’… then more people would have followed his lead,” she commented, disappointed at how a critical safety precaution had been spun into a political matter.
[via
Essence, cover image via
Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com]