Journalists suggested that President Trump (and other public figures) exacerbated xenophobia and put Asian Americans at risk from attack by referring to the novel coronavirus as ‘the Chinese virus’, ‘China virus’ and in an unequivocally and moronically racist epithet ‘Kung Flu’. Trump defended his choice of words: ‘It’s not racist at all … It comes from China, that’s why.’ Others supported Trump’s position by pointing out that one of the deadliest pandemics of the modern era is referred to as ‘the Spanish flu’. As an alibi, this is a nonsense.
