Donald Trump calls Covid-19 'kung flu' at Tulsa rally
Donald Trump used racist language to describe the coronavirus pandemic at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by terming the virus as the “kung flu”.
The Covid-19 outbreak began in Wuhan, China, late last year and has since spread around the world, killing tens of thousands of people. Trump’s response to the pandemic in the US has been widely criticized as the coronavirus cost more than 100,000 American lives and infected more than two million people.
Trump has repeatedly tried to term Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus” which has prompted outrage from many civil liberties groups, who have warned that such language can inspire racism and violence against Asian Americans.
But in Tulsa Trump appeared to go even further in his use of racist language.
“It has more names than any disease in history. I can name kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
Trump has previously defended his language around linking the virus to China. Speaking at a daily coronavirus task force briefing in March, he said it was “not racist at all. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.”
In April, the American Civil Liberties
Union deputy legal director, Cecillia Wang, wrote that attempts to blame China “lead to dangerous scapegoating and widespread ignorance, just when accurate public health information is critically needed”.
The World Health Organization has also advised against terms that link the virus to China to avoid stigmatization.
At the same rally Trump also used the Spanish word “hombre” when describing a fictional criminal breaking into a young woman’s home while she was alone at night. Trump was talking about nationwide protests aimed at defunding the police in the wake of a spate of police killings of Black people.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning … a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away,” Trump said.
Hombre is the Spanish word for “man”.
Trump has used the phrase before and in 2015 announced his presidential run by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists”.