As a result of a global pandemic and a social revolution, our society is constantly changing. The two largest culprits, the COVID-19 virus and systemic racism, go hand-in-hand and contribute to these sweeping changes. Even as the United States nears six million cases of the coronavirus; President Donald Trump has done nothing to solve both of these problems. 

In fact, on March 16, only a few days into the nation-wide quarantine, Trump tweeted: “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!” When addressing the coronavirus, Trump refers to it as the “Chinese Virus.” Although the virus did originate in Wuhan, China, the location does not correlate or have any significance to the scientific name. Similarly, this finger-pointing and gaslighting has had huge implications for not only the global Chinese population, but our own Asian American citizens. 

According to Donaghue from CBS, there have been 2,120 hate incidents committed against Asian Americans since the pandemic began. With this, Trump is using a tactic called fear mongering. While condemning a certain minority group for a global pandemic, the president is manipulating the public into thinking that this type of mindset is appropriate. Blaming an ethnicity for a deadly virus only insights further violence and does nothing to help the inequality problem in our country. The rhetoric that our nation’s leader is using is straying from the harsh reality, like the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people are falling victim to racism and he is doing nothing to stop it.