"We are now watching in real time as the Republicans change the way they talk about coronavirus, intentionally stoking xenophobia in order to shift attention away from President Trump's truncated response," Democratic Rep. Judy Chu of California said in a statement in March.
"Trump has repeatedly labeled this pandemic as the 'Chinese virus,' and his loyal Republican followers have come to his defense in increasingly hateful terms," Chu added. "Their words are inciting racism and violence against Asian Americans in the United States."Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to seek to continue a confrontation with a CBS News reporter which led to the president being accused of being racist towards Asian Americans.
Seeming to tweet in response to the incident involving Weijia Jiang on Monday evening, Trump wrote without offering evidence: “Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World. Chinese Americans are the most angry of all. I don’t blame them!”
At a briefing in the White House Rose Garden, Jiang asked the president why he continues to claim – wrongly, as he did again on Tuesday – that the US is performing better than other countries in terms of testing for coronavirus.
“Why does that matter?” asked the reporter, who was born in China and came to the US at the age of two. “Why is this a global competition when, every day, Americans are still losing their lives?”