When Donald Trump announced on January 31 travel restrictions on foreigners entering the United States from China, he was blasted as racist and xenophobic by many of the now-withdrawn Democratic 2020 presidential candidates—most of whom eventually grew quiet or supported the measures. His references to the “Wuhan” and “Chinese” virus supposedly proved his bias—in a way unlike China’s own use of the former adjective and the long-standing practice of labeling infections by their places of origin.

Joe Biden’s staff scrambled to explain the candidate’s earlier demagoguery surrounding the restrictions by claiming he was really outraged by Trump’s reference to a “Chinese” virus—oblivious that Biden’s attack on the measures predated Trump’s reference to the origins of the virus. Still, many wondered how and when Biden would inevitably try to square the circle of blasting Trump’s travel restrictions by later agreeing with them. And he tried just that on April 4 by insisting a once racist and xenophobic prohibition would have been enacted even earlier by a President Joe Biden, given that he knew it likely would have saved thousands of lives. Perhaps Biden meant he would have banned in early January all Chinese from arriving at U.S. airports and yet not called them Chinese? In sum, China, for a variety of economic, cultural, and historical reasons, was given a pass by the Left in a way that many monsters in the Middle East, for instance, have usually not been.