Texas GOP candidate bashes Chinese immigrants over coronavirus: 'I don't want them here at all'

At a political forum on Wednesday, GOP congressional candidate Sery Kim falsely suggested that Chinese immigrants bring the coronavirus to the United States - and suggested that she opposes their entry to the country. "I don't want them here at all," Kim, who is Korean American, told attendees,speaking of Chinese immigrants and China in general, the Dallas Morning News reported. "They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don't hold themselves accountable." Kim, 42, also argued that a rising surge in violence and threats against Asian Americans has been trumped up by the media, saying that "Asians have always faced violence. It's not worse than before."

Kim says her comments were meant to be directed at the Chinese government, not immigrants. "I am shocked that in an effort to counter Asian-American hate the liberal media is targeting me, an Asian and an immigrant, in an effort to paint me as anti-Asian and anti-immigrant just for speaking against the oppressive Chinese Communist Party," said Kim in a statement Friday night to The Post.

Kim also explicitly blamed China for the virus, saying, "China created [the] coronavirus in a Wuhan lab."