Racism against Asian-Americans is on the rise in the wake of outcry over China's role involving the coronavirus pandemic, and President Donald Trump's actions and words are not helping the situation, including with how he answered an Asian-American journalist's question at the White House, Sen. Mazie Hirono said Tuesday.
"He sees an Asian person who asks a question that he doesn't want to answer and the true xenophobic Trump comes out and he calls it a nasty question," the Hawaii Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "He's called me nasty. He's called me various kinds of names. He can't handle women, particularly strong women, and we know that Trump is xenophobic and it comes out time and again."
Monday, CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang asked Trump why he considers testing a global competition to him. The president answered by saying that's a question she should ask China but denied he'd asked her that for any specific reason.
"We all know that racism Asian-Americans is on the rise," said Hirono, who was born in Japan and said she's been called "Tokyo Rose," a racist slur. "You have a president who calls it the Chinese virus and members of his administration calling it the Kung flu and the president has not made it plain that we condemn racist attacks, but he doesn't do that strongly enough, so we have seen a rise in hate crimes against Asians."
Hirono said she and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., have put together a resolution condemning racist acts in connection with the coronavirus emergency.
"After 9/11, you had the DOJ coming forward to say that they're not going to condone attacks against Muslims," she said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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