Over the weekend, the John Cornyn senate campaign sent a fundraising email blaming China for the coronavirus.
“China’s communist government misled the world about Coronavirus, and now we are all paying the price,” the email stated.
This was just the latest in a series of xenophobic comments from Cornyn, one as recent as March when he again blamed China for being the “source” of many viruses such as COVID-19 “because [it’s] the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that.”
In an interview with The Intercept, John Yang, the president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC, expressed concern about the use of such language from GOP leaders like Cornyn.
“There’s a clear link between the rhetoric that’s being used and the increased harm to our community,” Yang said.
Cornyn is up for reelection in November, and seems to be trying to obtain support from Texas GOP voters by showing his alignment with President Trump in blaming China.
“Some would even rather blame President Trump,” Cornyn stated in an email. “That’s why I decided that I needed to take on the responsibility of sharing the truth [that] China is to blame.”
Back in mid-March, Trump defended his renaming of the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” saying “It’s not racist at all. It comes from China, that’s why.”
Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Sarah brings more than seven years of experience as a multimedia journalist to Texas Signal, where she serves as our Podcast and Video Producer, managing the company's three podcasts, including SignalCast, TexMix Podcast and Three Righteous Mamas, and assisting with copy-editing and social media as well. Sarah is also the Editor-at-Large at Brown Girl Magazine, and an avid artist, TV/film enthusiast and cook. Sarah graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Journalism, and received a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Houston.
