Andrew Yang is suggesting President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Kung flu” is to “distract attention from the fact that the administration is completely botched and mishandled the coronavirus pandemic,” as he says.
During an interview Wednesday evening on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Anderson Cooper noted that White House counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway recently defended the president, despite her previous disapproval of the term.
“This is the bind that Trump supporters find themselves in,” Yang said. He added:
“They have to defend something that they themselves criticized a number of days or weeks ago and we all can see exactly what is happening, Anderson, where using a term like this is just Trump’s attention to distract attention from the fact that the administration is completely botched and mishandled the coronavirus pandemic.”
Trump referred to the coronavirus as the “Kung flu” during his campaign rally last weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“It’s a disease, without question, has more names than any disease in history. I can name, ‘Kung flu.’ I can name 19 different versions of names,” the president said.
Yang, a former 2020 Democratic presidential contender, later went on to say Trump’s “power” over things is “losing steam … you can see it in the polls.”
“This is like the desperate thrashing around of a losing candidate,” he said.
“He’s just degrading himself and the office of the president further by grasping at straws that aren’t actually keeping him afloat. I wish he could figure out a path that did not involve racist comments that end up throwing millions of Americans under a rhetorical bus, but here it is and hopefully, we can get him out of there and call an end to this presidency in four-and-a-half short months.”
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As Cooper noted, Conway defended the president as she told reporters on Wednesday, “My reaction is that the president has made very clear he wants everybody to understand, and I think many Americans do understand, that the virus originated in China and that had China been more transparent and honest with the United States and the world, we wouldn’t have all the death and destruction that, unfortunately, we’ve suffered.”
Her remark is a contrast to her previous comment in March when she called the term “highly offensive.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany previously said that Trump did not think that the term was offensive. She said, “He is linking it to its place of origin.”