How Trump Turned Asians Into a Target

The Daily Beast Podcast · Mar 19, 2021 · 55m

It didn’t have to be this way. The coronavirus pandemic didn’t have to become politicized—or racialized. But last March, President Donald Trump “decided to call coronavirus, which has no ethnicity or zip code or nationality, the China virus,” says Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali on the 100th episode of The New Abnormal. “There was no reason to make coronavirus a racist thing,” co-host Molly Jong-Fast adds. Now, not only are people of Chinese descent coming under attack across the U.S., but other Asians—because “bigots aren’t nuanced,” adds Ali, who wrote about the wave of anti-Asian hate…