‘Write books or shut up’: Stephen King takes heat after criticizing Trump’s Covid-19 response team for being ‘male, old & white’

Horror novelist Stephen King’s latest hot take on the Covid-19 outbreak has not gone down well online, slamming President Trump’s response team for having the wrong race, age and gender – but netizens advised he stick to fiction.

Weighing in during the president’s national emergency declaration on Friday – where Trump was joined by a group of health officials tapped to help with efforts to contain the spread of the lethal virus – King sagely pointed out the demographic composition of the team, describing it as “all male, all old, and all white.”

The uncalled-for observation has drawn a storm of reactions on Twitter, with many criticizing King for dragging the completely unrelated issues of race and gender into the debate over the administration’s ability to stem the health crisis.

With an ever-itchy Twitter finger, King apparently didn’t watch the briefing for long before writing off the team members as too old, male and white – yet there were, in fact, women present. Realizing his error, the author fired off a quick backtrack and a “Whoops … my bad.” But hardly missing a beat, he immediately resumed the tirade, commenting that the “lady with the shawl” looked “so great” next to the other “bozo” team members – while completely ignoring her qualifications.

The good-looking “lady with the shawl,” it turns out, is Dr Deborah Birx, who was made White House response coordinator for the Covid-19 pandemic, and since 2014 has overseen a $6.6 billion program to combat AIDS in 65 countries under the purview of the State Department. Commenters on social media rushed to inform King of Birx’s credentials, which go far beyond her looks.

Others urged King to get back to what he’s known for – writing spooky stories – and to give the factually-challenged virtue signalling a rest.

Also present for the national emergency announcement was Seema Verma, who administers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Trump administration, and is the founder and former CEO of health consultancy firm SVC Inc. – another female overlooked by King in his quest for internet approval.

King's efforts to burnish his woke bona fides comes just a few weeks after he was roasted by his fellow liberals over declaring that he valued quality over diversity in matters of art – and was forced to recant that heresy. When it comes to the much less serious subject of a global outbreak, however, apparently skin color and sexual anatomy outweigh scientific expertise for the novelist.

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