Hillary can’t help it.
The woman still smoldering with resentment over her upset in the 2016 presidential election sparked a new round of recriminations on Wednesday with a Twitter post accusing President Donald Trump of racism for accurately labeling the coronavirus plaguing the country as “Chinese” in origin.
Stoking divisiveness when the United States needs a unified front against a dangerous enemy is a classic Democrat desperation tactic – whether it’s taking the side of terrorists in the years after 9/11 with incessant, exaggerated complaints about the prison at Guantanamo Bay (still open even after eight years of a Barack Obama presidency and its closure being part of the party’s official platform for the 2016 election), or opposing Trump’s efforts to bring the murderous mullahs of Iran to heel.
And when all else fails, of course, just accusing Republicans of “racism” is standard.
Clinton’s problem at this point, though, is that not only is she a known liar – with literally decades of statements on the public record that were deliberately deceptive – but her argument doesn’t even pass the low bar of being remotely logical.
Just for the record, here’s Hillary’s tweet.
The president is turning to racist rhetoric to distract from his failures to take the coronavirus seriously early on, make tests widely available, and adequately prepare the country for a period of crisis.
Don't fall for it. Don't let your friends and family fall for it.
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“The president is turning to racist rhetoric to distract from his failures to take the coronavirus seriously early on, make tests widely available, and adequately prepare the country for a period of crisis,” Clinton wrote. “Don’t let your friends and family fall for it.”
As Trump made clear in his news conference Wednesday, he was not only accurately describing the origin of the COVID-19 virus — in the very Chinese city of Wuhan — he was also semantically reminding the communist government that the United States isn’t going to be bullied.
The Chinese government has been throwing its considerable weight around to avoid being pegged with responsibility for the virus it inflicted on the world.
As National Review senior writer David Harsanyi pointed out in an insightful – and grimly hilarious – piece on Tuesday, the Chinese government has pressured authorities like the World Health Organization to avoid attaching a geographic origin to the current pandemic that’s causing death and disruption around the globe.
While the WHO might be spineless enough to go along (despite its name, “World Health,” is clearly not as important to the organization as being accommodating to the Beijing dictatorship), Trump is not ready to oblige.
China has even floated the rumor that the virus originated with the American military, which somehow planted it in the capital of China’s Hubei province.
To his eternal credit, Trump explained at the news conference that he chose to call the virus “Chinese” in part to make the point that the disease did originate in the Middle Kingdom and partly to show China it would not be allowed to shirk the blame.
“China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them. That was false,” Trump said.
“Rather than having an argument, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,’ and it did come from China. So I think it’s a very accurate term.
“But, no, I didn’t appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody.”
When asked if the term created a “stigma,” Trump was equally logical.
“I think that saying our military gave it to them creates a stigma.”
Beyond geographic accuracy regarding the origin of the virus, and beyond the geopolitical importance of letting the Chinese know they won’t be able to get away with a defamatory lie, there’s the simple fact that the Chinese media outlets referred to the outbreak as the “Wuhan flu” before it became an issue of global concern.
Screenshots posted by freelance journalist Mary Hui show Chinese news organizations had no problem using that term until the Chinese Communist Party (meaning President Xi Jinping or his immediate minions) had decided to send it down the memory hole.
Xinhua & Global Times called it "Wuhan virus" early on. That's no longer convenient for the CCP as it seeks to wrest control of the narrative, so last week the foreign ministry called Pompeo's use of the phrase "Wuhan coronavirus" a "despicable practice" fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_6…
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Here's another: a Jan. 25 Global Times piece published on the People's Daily site, two days after Wuhan was locked down. Then on the right we have a Xinhua commentary dated Feb. 13 in which "Wuhan virus" is condemned as "racist." en.people.cn/n3/2020/0125/c…en.people.cn/n3/2020/0213/c…
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So, to recap:
Logic dictates that there is literally nothing “racist” about calling a virus that originated in China a “Chinese” virus. (There is, however, a good deal of Chinese government propaganda interest — and American Democratic Party interest — in spreading that idea around.)
Political considerations – in the form of letting the increasingly belligerent Beijing government know that the United States won’t be bullied – helped dictate Trump’s decision, not “racist” considerations.
And recent history shows that Chinese news outlets themselves saw nothing “racist” in referring to the virus by its point of origin.
But Hillary Clinton still can’t help it.
Her own husband’s administration was rife with scandal related to the Chinese government: “Chinagate” it was called, for those who don’t remember or might have been too young in the 1990s.
The American Spectator published a handy reminder of it all back in October 2016, when it still looked for all the world like Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States.
Her political party’s current hopes of winning back the presidency are riding on the faltering shoulders of former Vice President Joe Biden and the unspoken-in-public hope that the coronavirus does so much damage to the American life that voters will actually dump Trump for a man who couldn’t win the presidency the first two times he tried and is manifestly incapable of doing the job more than 20 years down the road.
And after some early missteps, the Trump administration is marshaling the might of the American government to keep the country safe from a potential disaster.
Branding Trump a “racist” is all Hillary & Co. have now, so she can’t help but use it. Divisiveness is really all the Democrats have.
If the American electorate retains its sanity, though, it’s not going to help Democrats at all.
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