Trump's labels amid virus battle fan anti-Asian racism

AFTER trying to play down the potential threat that the novel coronavirus was posing to Americans, and even suggesting at one point that it was a "hoax" perpetrated by the "fake news" media and the Democrats, US President Donald Trump is now rewriting history and suggesting that he has always known that that was a real pandemic. "I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic," he told White House reporters last week.

For him it has always been about The Donald and to what extent this or that development would affect his chances of getting re-elected in November. Hence his earlier attempts to persuade everyone that everything was "under control" and that the virus could fade away sooner or later, was part of an effort to gain the support of an anxious American public ahead of an election.

More important, the former New York tycoon was most worried, and rightly so, over the impact that the bad news on the pandemic would have on financial markets. After all, the growing economy and the bullish stock market were the reasons that even Americans who may detest him on a personal level were willing to give him another chance to serve four more years in office. Let the good times roll!