Stephen Colbert Blames Trump’s ‘Kung Flu’ Racism for Anti-Asian Hate Crimes
The host said Trump “bears a particular responsibility for amplifying this form of hatred, just as surely as he bears responsibility for the series of events on January 6th.”
“One thing is clear, this isn’t an isolated incident,” Stephen Colbert told Late Show viewers Thursday night during a long section of his monologue about the Atlanta mass shooting that clearly targeted Asian women.
As the host explained, studies have shown a dramatic increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans last year, spiking in March and April at the beginning to the COVID-19 lockdowns. “And that matches up neatly with the person who, for nearly a year, did this,” Colbert said before playing a damning supercut of Donald Trump using slurs like “China virus,” “China plague” and “kung flu.”
“He’s clearly just using hate as a tool to blame his own failings on a foreign country,” the host said, joking it’s the “same way he went around insisting that Portugal was Eric’s real dad.”
Most unnervingly, Colbert played a clip from exactly one year earlier when White House reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump directly if he thought that type of racist rhetoric could put Asian Americans in danger. “No, not at all. Not at all,” Trump replied. “I think they probably would agree with it 100 percent. It comes from China. There’s nothing not to agree with.”
“Wow, that did not age well,” Colbert shot back. “And neither did the words coming out of its mouth.”
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He went on to say that Trump “bears a particular responsibility for amplifying this form of hatred, just as surely as he bears responsibility for the series of events on January 6th.”
“But this is a January 6th that’s happening every day for Asian-American people in our country because he was desperate to pass the buck, or at least exchange it for some yuan,” Colbert continued. “This will always be part of his legacy. He will always be remembered as a hateful man who left a stain, not just on the White House pillows, but on our whole society by inviting his MAGA minions to an all-you-can-hate racist buffet.”
“It’s going to take a long time to repair the damage he’s done and I hope one day he’ll come to understand how much pain he’s caused,” Colbert concluded. “I’m sorry, I misread that. I hope one day he sits on his own balls. Like, really hard.”
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