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

published 18 March 2020

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.

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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

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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.