“The China virus.” That’s what Donald Trump, who is always eager to shift blame, calls the coronavirus pandemic. For example, last month, President Donald Trump tweeted that: “The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!”
Okay, sure. The virus is widely believed to have started in China, and there’s nothing new about naming viruses after their supposed national origin: the Hong Kong flu, the Spanish flu, and so forth.
But “China virus” is more than a name to President Trump. “China virus” underlies President Trump’s coronavirus strategy (or lack thereof). By talking about the “China virus,” in one masterful swoop of deception and deflection, Trump simultaneously appeals to his xenophobic voters, deflects blame, and – this last deception is especially brilliant – gives his many critics something to complain about other than his incompetence. The “China virus” is the verbal meme that puts Trump in control of the public health agenda.
In the meantime, United States has, as of this writing, suffered 66,760 of the 245,531 of the confirmed coronavirus deaths, about 27% of the total, while the United States’ population is only about 4.25% of the world population. Prima facie, something is going very wrong with the American coronavirus public health response.
Indeed, Trump’s legendary incompetence manifests itself everywhere you look:
- Trump asked his science advisors whether it would be beneficial to inject household disinfectants into coronavirus patients. Really? Yes, he did.
- Trump suggested shining bright ultraviolet light into coronavirus patients.
- Trump promised that the United States would soon be able to administer 5 million coronavirus tests a day. Of course, that capacity does not exist and he soon backtracked, calling the story a “media trap.”
Injecting bleach into patients and promising medical tests that never materialize in the promised numbers won’t stop the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump therefore could choose between two alternatives: (1) he could take effective public health actions to reduce the pandemic’s farms, or (2) he can shift the blame elsewhere. Alternative (1) would require administrative and leadership skills. Since President Trump has, so far, manifested few administrative skills, his only remaining choice is to shift the blame. China fills the bill just fine: the virus probably originated in China; China is a dictatorship with a morally questionable government, and China did, in the early days of the virus, conceal how bad things really were. That is, as we will see, pure diversion on Trump's part: even if China truly was as bad as he says, that does not excuse his own mistakes.
So, let’s look at Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric.
First, one of Trump’s major themes was that he restricted immigration from China. For example, in the April 22, 2020 Coronavirus Task Force Press Conference, Trump said:
“Plus, we put the ban on so much earlier. When Nancy Pelosi, as an example — you don’t say this — when she’s having her rally in San Francisco — in Chinatown, in San Francisco. Nobody wants to say that. If we didn’t — and Dr. Fauci said this — if we didn’t close our country to China, we would have been so infected, like nobody’s ever seen.”Since (according to Trump), the virus was China’s fault, stopping immigration from China should (according to Trump) have stopped the virus. Focusing on the false claim that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi held a big rally in Chinatown sharpened the contrast between Trump, who opposes China, and Pelosi, whom Trump attacked.
At a White House business roundtable on April 29, Trump acknowledged the pandemic’s enormity, but blamed it on others, including China:
“Look, this thing will pass. And when it passes, that’ll be a great achievement. And we — we’ve done a very good job. It’s far too many people, needlessly, because it could have been stopped at the point of origin. And somehow we weren’t helped by — whether it’s World Health Organization or China, whoever, we weren’t — they didn’t do what should have been done.”Not his fault, he said, but the World Health Organization or China (or maybe both, since he wasn’t clear) was to blame. Notice the vagueness: “somehow we weren’t helped.” A week earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused the WHO of being subservient to China: “We know that the leader of that organization traveled to China and then declined to declare it a pandemic until everyone in the world knew that was already true,” so Trump was tying together a collection of China-related accusations.
At her first White House press briefing, newly minted Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany dealt with the press question about China and the coronavirus by accusing China of having "mishandled the situation:"
“Q The markets are down super substantially today after the President yesterday suggested in the East Room that he might use tariffs to punish China over the coronavirus. Is there any serious consideration being given to putting new tariffs on China, or was the President just spit balling yesterday?First, Trump’s rhetoric has long centered, above all, in what stage magicians call misdirection. If he can divert attention to China’s failures, which were certainly real, he can get his supporters to think less about his own failures, which were also real.
“MS. MCENANY: Look, I won’t get ahead of any announcements from the President, but I will echo the President’s displeasure with China. It’s no secret that China mishandled this situation.”
More about Trump and Misdirection: Trump's Twitter Speech: Lots of Talking Points, No Content
Second, Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric appeals to xenophobic members of his voting base. As Eliza Relman pointed out last year out in Business Insider, “Since the earliest days of his presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed tensions over race and immigration.”
Third, every time mainstream persons in media outlets complain about Trump’s China xenophobia, they accomplish little other than to reinforce the xenophobia of Trump supporters. This morally obtuse boomerang effect is Trump’s evil superpower. And the mainstream media never seem to get it. So, when the Huffington Post’s George Zornick writes, “giving voice to a hateful blame game that has been simmering among hardcore right-wingers for weeks,” he is completely right. But the simple fact that he pointed it out becomes, to Trump's supporters, more evidence that Trump is baiting liberals.
In other words, baiting liberals works. Baiting liberals puts Trump in charge. Every time someone like Relman or Zornick correctly points out that Trump’s rhetoric is hateful and bigoted, they are burning oxygen that could be used to attack the incredible weakness of Trump’s policies. Yes, Trump's xenophobia is evil, and it is right to criticize it. But Trump’s persuasive technique centers on spewing out so many outrageous comments that critics, fact checkers, and respectable people can’t keep up with the torrent. Saying cruel and bigoted things – and talking about the “China virus” is, bad as it is, far from the cruelest – does not harm Trump's standing among his base voters. The Republican base and undecided voters would be much more likely to care about Trump’s weak coronavirus response. By blaming it all on China, Trump diverts attention from his own failures, appeals to his base's xenophobic views, and distracts mainstream commentators from talking about his policy mistakes.
Inspired by Trump's strategy, a Republican consulting group distributed a 57-page memo urging Republicans to attack China's coronavirus policies from every angle, giving them an alternative to defending Trump's obviously indefensible policies.
I have written several times that the winner of the debate is the side that controls the agenda. Trump is saying many things that are wrong, but the agenda is all his.
No comments:
Post a Comment