White House says Trump does not regret ‘Kung Flu’ remark, saying the origin of the virus is China

On Monday, the White House came to President Donald Trump’s defense after he referred to the coronavirus as “Kung Flu” — saying he does not regret it.

“What the president does is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China. It’s a fair thing to point out, as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history, ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers,” said Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary.

“It’s not a discussion about Asian-Americans who the president values and prizes as citizens of this great country. It is an indictment of china for letting this virus get here.”

The White House also clarified Trump’s comments that he ordered to slow down testing for COVID-19, because the process had led to a reporting of increased cases.

McEnany said Trump was only kidding and said that no such request was made.

He was joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact that when you test more, you also find more cases.

Trump made these controversial comments during his first political rally since the pandemic — in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday.

He addressed a smaller-than-expected crowd, and accused the media and protesters for discouraging attendees.

Only a handful of attendees wore masks inside the 19,000-seater Bok Arena — despite reports that up to eight of trump’s campaign team testing positive for COVID-19.

“I’ve been watching the fake news for weeks now and everything is negative: ‘Don’t go. Don’t come. Don’t do anything.’ Today it was like I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like it. You are warriors.”

With less than five months to go before the presidential election, Trump found himself trailing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former vice president Joe Biden in the polls.

Biden has slammed Trump for how he has handled the pandemic — which has claimed the lives of over 120,200 people in the U.S.

The U.S. continues to top coronavirus cases worldwide–with close to 2.3 million.

But Trump defended his pandemic response.

“I saved hundreds of thousands of lives. We don’t ever get even a mention.”

And then he proceeded to say more coronavirus testing led to identifying more cases — much to his annoyance.

“Here’s the bad part. When you test – when you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people; you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please.”

“By the way, it’s a disease, without question has more names than any disease in history. I can name ‘kung flu’ – I can name 19 different versions of names.”

Trump, who has called himself the least racist person in the world has repeatedly come under fire for calling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ amid an increase in reported cases of discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans — including Filipinos — since the pandemic began.