- Trump said that "Kung Flu," a racist term, is "one of "19 or 20" names that people use to describe COVID-19.
- "By the way, it's a disease, without question, has more names than any other in history. I can name, Kung Flu, I can name, 19 different versions of names," Trump said at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
- In March, CBS News White House correspondent Weija Jiang, who is Chinese-American, said that an unnamed White House official had referred to the virus as "the Kung Flu" in front of her.
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President Donald Trump said that the "Kung Flu," a racist term described as "highly offensive" by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway in March, is "one of "19 or 20" names that people use to describe COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
"By the way, it's a disease, without question, has more names than any other in history. I can name, Kung Flu, I can name, 19 different versions of names. Many call it a virus, which it is, many call it a flu, what difference, I think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name," Trump said at a rally in Tulsa.
In March, CBS News White House correspondent Weija Jiang, who is Chinese-American, said that an unnamed White House official had referred to the virus as "the Kung Flu" in her presence.
At the time, Kellyanne Conway called the remark "highly offensive" and pressed Jiang to reveal who had said it to her.
"I don't know how these conversations go, and that's highly offensive so you should tell us who it is, I'd like to know who it is," Conway said before invoking her husband George Conway, who is of Filipino descent. "I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals, I'm married to an Asian...my kids are partly — I'm married to an Asian-American, my kids are 25% Filipino."
Trump's Saturday re-election rally in Tulsa is the first he'd held since March 2, right before states began imposing stay-at-home orders and limiting large crowds to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Trump is projecting optimistic messaging about the pandemic and is lauding his own administration's response, several states — including Oklahoma — are seeing cases, positive test rates, and hospitalizations from COVID-19 increase.
Via PakApNews