Actress Katie Leung, 32, who comes from a Chinese background, was horrified when she saw what Donald Trump labelled the new coronavirus: the “Chinese Virus.” He made the insensitive remark in a tweet on March 17, and so Katie clapped back with her own tweet on Tuesday. “Kiss my chinese a– you absolute racist gobshite,” wrote Katie, who’s most known for playing Cho Chang in the Harry Potter film series. FYI, a “gobshite” is an Irish slang word used for people who say unnecessary and unwanted things (AKA, Trump’s tweet).
There’s no clear reason why Trump decided to call COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus.” His tweet was aimed at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — it read, “Cuomo wants ‘all states to be treated the same.’ But all states aren’t the same. Some are being hit hard by the Chinese Virus, some are being hit practically not at all. New York is a very big ‘hotspot’, West Virginia has, thus far, zero cases. Andrew, keep politics out of it.”
The new coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease that has now claimed more than 6,000 lives, was first detected in a case in Wuhan, China in Dec. 2019. The country was rocked hard by the mysterious virus’s alarming infection rates, which has led to an emergence of stories about Asian-directed racism and xenophobia in America. Given these reports, calling the coronavirus “Chinese” came across as tone deaf to many people, like Katie.
Kiss my chinese ass you absolute racist gobshite. https://t.co/K5XlFf9Bzj
— Katie Leung (@Kt_Leung) March 17, 2020
Katie hasn’t been the only public figure to call out Trump in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Anna Wintour also tore into the POTUS! For an op-ed in Vogue, the magazine’s editor-in-chief wrote, “I, like so many of us, have been appalled by how he has responded to the pandemic — the optimistic and fact-free assurances that all will be fine, the chaotic implementation of travel bans and claims about a ‘foreign virus,’ the narcissistic ease with which he has passed blame to others, his dishonesty with the American people, and worst of all, his shocking lack of empathy and compassion for those who are suffering and fearful.”