After months of listening to Donald Trump dub the coronavirus “The “Chinese Virus” and “The Kung Flu,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come up with her own name for the novel coronavirus. Because of Donald Trump’s disastrous leadership during the pandemic, she has now coined COVID-19 the “Trump Virus.”
Pelosi used the term several times during an episode with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, telling the host that Trump is responsible for the rising cases of coronavirus that we now see across the United States. “It is a pandemic that has gotten worse before it will get better because of his inaction,” Pelosi said. “And in fact, clearly, it is the Trump Virus.”
The House Speaker noted that Trump could have mandated masks earlier but chose to make the face coverings a political issue. “If he had said months ago, ‘let’s wear masks, let’s socially distance instead of having rallies’ and political whatever they were, then more people would have followed his lead,” Pelosi said in defense of the new label. “He’s the president of the United States.”
The congresswoman from California also stated that as it pertains to PPE, Trump has continuously lied about the numbers and his own ability to ensure that hospitals have the proper equipment they need. In a tweet following her CNN appearance, Pelosi said, “One of the reasons we are so far behind in our response to the #TrumpVirus? We don’t have the equipment we need to test, process results, and protect our frontline workers. The President must make full use of the Defense Production Act immediately.”
More than 144,000 people have died from the coronavirus in the United States, with cases in 48 states currently on the rise. Pelosi has been highly critical of Trump’s response to the numbers, suggesting that he does not care about the livelihood of those he was elected to serve.
On Tuesday Trump gave his first coronavirus briefing since April. For the first time, he publicly urged people to wear masks. He also admitted that the crisis will “get worse before it gets better.”