Donald Trump’s “Chinese Virus” tweet just blew up in his face

| 11:20 pm EDT March 16, 2020
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During his press conference today, there were moments when Donald Trump almost sounded like a mentally competent human. He praised the media. He admitted that the coronavirus crisis will last through at least the summer, and that we’re facing a recession. But then Trump went on Twitter and reminded us who he really is when he referred to it as the “Chinese Virus.”

Trump appeared to be trying to reassure his racist supporters that they should continue to stick with him, even if it means getting wiped out in a pandemic, because at least they’ll still get to have a President who says racist things. But whatever Trump was aiming for, he ended up landing somewhere else.

It’s not just that “Chinese Virus” is trending atop Twitter as everyone piles on with criticism. It’s that his tweet has gotten about half as many negative comments as it’s gotten likes. This is by far the closest we’ve come to seeing Trump get “ratioed” on Twitter, a term used when the ratio of negative comments to likes ends up being ugly for the person who posted the tweet.

The reality is that by admitting today that the coronavirus crisis is real, and it’s going to be devastating, and it’s going to be with us for awhile, Donald Trump just shattered his supporters’ illusion that he can magically fix things. He just admitted failure. He’s not going to be able to keep all of them in the loop simply by tweeting something racist.