When Donald Trump wants to rally his base and distract from his many screw-ups, he falls back on one thing: xenophobic racism.

And now it looks like members of his administration have picked up this dirty trick.

Earlier this week, CBS reporter Weijia Jiang tweeted that a member of the Trump administration had called the coronavirus “Kung-Flu” when talking to her. She is Chinese American. “Makes me wonder what they’re calling it behind my back,” she wrote.

Trump himself sent out a tweet Monday calling Covid-19 “the Chinese virus,” and then repeated it Wednesday as he began a televised news conference in which he invoked the Defense Production Act. It’s an intentional bit of provocation and racism that evokes the turn-of-the-century “yellow peril,” when Americans and Europeans fear-mongered about allegedly dangerous East Asians.

In 1882, the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from coming to the country — not so very different from Trump’s own racist and fear-mongering 2017 travel ban that predominantly targets Muslim-majority countries.

And now, we see that Trump is not backing down.

A close up photo of Trump’s notes at his news conference today shows where he crossed out “Corona” and replaced it with “Chinese” virus.

Close up of President @realDonaldTrump notes is seen where he crossed out "Corona" and replaced it with "Chinese" Virus as he speaks with his coronavirus task force today at the White House. #trump #trumpnotes pic.twitter.com/kVw9yrPPeJ

— Jabin Botsford (@jabinbotsford) March 19, 2020

Twitter was sickened:

Among other things, what this shows is they're using the term "the coronavirus" internally like everyone else and are throwing this up publicly because they would rather have an argument about political correctness than discuss the response itself. https://t.co/Wq7wVRQOOT

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 19, 2020

tfw you remind yourself to be racist https://t.co/JqAGqVVes1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 19, 2020

in case anyone thought the racism wasn’t planned and intentional https://t.co/oWo4Y2faZ4

— shauna (@goldengateblond) March 19, 2020

Trump is a racist ass 😡 https://t.co/ZSG2ktgVuh

— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) March 19, 2020

When someone you know dies of this thing, you can find solace in the fact that when the president was supposed to be leading the nation through this pandemic, he was busy making hand edits to speeches so that the Chinese would be adequately scapegoated. https://t.co/zhLboCdfPp

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) March 19, 2020