Trump's tweets show his dramatic 9-day shift toward actually taking coronavirus seriously

President Trump is apparently worried about coronavirus now.

In a Wednesday tweet, Trump said he'd "always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously," using the offensive and medically incorrect term for COVID-19 in a possible attempt to further distance himself from any blame over its spread. Trump has "done a very good job from the beginning" staving off the virus, he maintained — despite acting totally unbothered by it as recently as last week.

Contrast that with a tweet from nine days ago in which Trump downplayed the virus and compared it to the everyday flu.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

That's not to mention the many comments Trump made out loud about how unthreatening he perceived COVID-19 to be.

Fox News, home to some of Trump's closest allies and confidantes, also majorly changed its tune on coronavirus in the past few weeks, as The Washington Post documented in this whiplash-inducing video. Kathryn Krawczyk

Explore More

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.