Leading Illinois Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and state Democratic chair U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, criticized Downstate Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis on Friday for reportedly downplaying the role of pandemic rhetoric in violence against Asian Americans.
But Davis, a five-term congressman from Taylorville, said his remarks had been misinterpreted by a CNN reporter. He said he has never used terms like “Wuhan virus” and “Kung flu” and accused the cable news network of manipulating his words to get tweets.
The controversy comes amid heightened concern over discrimination and acts of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders after a gunman in Atlanta on Tuesday killed eight people, mostly women of Asian descent, in a string of attacks.
Annie Grayer, a CNN congressional correspondent, on Friday used Twitter to say that Davis “told me he believed the suggestion there is a relation between rhetoric and hate crimes against Asian Americans is ‘all political correctness.’ Davis instead said phrases like ‘Kung flu’ or ‘China virus’ are no different than saying ‘UK variant.'”
Duckworth, whose mother is of Thai Chinese heritage, said during a news conference on escalating concerns of violence against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islander community that she would be contacting Davis.
“I’m going to be calling Rodney Davis to talk to him about his claiming to say that calling COVID-19 the ‘China virus,’ the ‘Chinese virus,’ or ‘Kung flu’ is not racist. It is racist,” said Duckworth, the state’s junior senator.
“It does not help the situation and it really unfairly again puts a bull’s-eye on the backs of Asian Americans all across the country to be the victims of attacks and that is not acceptable,” Duckworth said.
Duckworth cited former Republican President Donald Trump’s use of such terms to describe the virus and called him “one of the chief inflamers or rhetoric against Asian Americans when it comes to, especially, the COVID pandemic.”
Sign up for The Spin to get the top stories in politics delivered to your inbox weekday afternoons.
Kelly, a fifth-term congresswoman from Matteson who replaced Michael Madigan as state Democratic chair earlier this month, said it was “offensive” for Davis to “dismiss condemnation of hate speech as ‘political correctness.'” She called on him to “stop with the reckless and hateful rhetoric.”
Davis issued his own response on Twitter to the CNN correspondent’s tweet.
“That’s a misinterpretation of what I said. Unlike CNN, I’ve never used phrases like ‘Wuhan virus’ or ‘kung flu,'” Davis tweeted. “When we spoke, I also said ‘there’s hate crimes against all different groups, but we’re seeing it all across the spectrum of humanity, and it’s got to change.'”
In another tweet, Davis said it was “ridiculous how CNN manipulates words to further their own political narrative, divide people, and get retweets. This isn’t journalism. It’s political activism. Violence is violence & all violence should be condemned, whether it’s motivated by hate or politics or otherwise.”
Davis then posted examples of CNN stories with headlines that used the terms “Wuhan coronavirus” or “Chinese coronavirus” and rhetorically asked the network, “How responsible are they for what happened in Georgia?”
But the examples Davis posted were largely from CNN stories during the initial stages of coronavirus more than a year ago, when the COVID-19 outbreak was primarily located in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China.
