CNN’s Jim Acosta Calls Out Trump’s Labeling of Corona as ‘Foreign’ Virus: ‘Smacking of Xenophobia’

CNN’s Jim Acosta called out the nativist elements of President Donald Trump’s Oval Office address on the coronavirus, highlighting Trump’s use of “foreign” to describe the virus as well as his unprecedented, months-long travel ban between the US and Europe.

Speaking with CNN host Chris Cuomo just moments after Trump’s brief, sober speech, Acosta analyzed the rhetoric in the context of reporting that White House adviser and hard-line nativist Stephen Miller helped craft the address.

“I think it went well beyond what any of us really thought,” Acosta told Cuomo. “I don’t think many of us were expecting the president to announce to a travel ban from Europe for 30 days starting at Friday at midnight. That is stunning. That is going to cause major disruptions to the travel industry and cause all kinds of problems that we haven’t seen since the Trump Administration tried the travel ban very early on in the administration.”

“The other thing, Chris, that we should point out, at one point during the address the president referred to the coronavirus as a quote, ‘foreign’ virus,” Acosta noted. “That is interesting because I was talking to sources this evening, one of the points that the president wanted to make tonight, wanted to get across to Americans is that this virus did not start here, but that they are dealing with it. Now why the president would go as far as to describe it as a ‘foreign’ virus, that is something we’ll also be asking questions about. But it should be pointed out that Stephen Miller, who is an immigration hardliner who advises the president is one of the top domestic policy advisers and speech writer, was a driving force in writing this speech and I think it is going to come across to a lot of Americans as smacking of xenophobia to use that kind of term in this speech, Chris.”

“Sometimes we can answer the questions and the answer is he’s doing it to put blame somewhere else,” Cuomo pointed out. “We’ve seen over the last few days [House Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy and others saying the ‘Chinese coronavirus,’ the ‘Wuhan coronavirus.’ We get that. It can’t be the main concern right now.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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