https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/25/elaine-chao-donald-trump-racist-attacks-00079478
The private angst over Donald Trump’s racist attacks on Elaine Chao goes
public
His rhetoric “says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about
Asian Americans.”
“People should stop feigning outrage and engaging in controversies that exist
only in their heads,” Cheung said. “What’s actually concerning is her
family’s deeply troubling ties to Communist China, which has undermined
American economic and national security.”
But few outside Trump’s inner circle dispute that the ex-president’s posts
about Chao are racist. And privately, GOP officials have raised concerns that
his rhetoric is not mere background noise but an illustration of the way he
has fundamentally altered the spectrum of accepted political discourse.
“Trump’s repeated racist attacks on Elaine Chao are beneath the office he
once held and particularly despicable in this moment when the Asian American
community has been subject to threats and harassment,” said Alyssa Farah, a
former administration official turned critic of Trump.
The latest Trump attack — a suggestion that Chao may have been responsible
for President Joe Biden bringing classified documents with him to his
post-vice presidency office in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood — came amid a
series of shootings that targeted Asian American communities. All of that has
taken place against the backdrop of a rise of violence
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-crimes-increased-339-percent-nationwide-last-year-repo-rcna14282>
directed at Asian Americans.
While combating the rise of China has emerged as a rare issue with bipartisan
support, there are concerns among lawmakers that anti-China attitudes could
contribute to violence against Asian Americans. Some Republicans say Trump’s
repeated and personal attacks in particular have hurt party efforts to make
further inroads among Asian American voters — a task that the Trump 2020
campaign
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/16/trump-indian-americans-biden-kamala-harris-414504>
itself tried to undertake.
Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric has been directed at others beyond Chao. Over the
weekend, he went after
<https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109737010997901791> a Biden
aide, Kathy Chung, believed to be responsible for packing the then vice
president’s materials when he was leaving office in 2017. He has said
<https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-continues-knock-other-republicans-ahead-expected-2024-announcement-fresh-attack-youngkin>
that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s name “sounds Chinese” (Youngkin is not
Chinese). He has mimicked Asian accents
<https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trump-used-asian-accent-mock-210909533.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJNHQvL0oSvd8aEdS9aS06KF-PrMlBIEhIwBkvDSdYskBaD7an8bbP0NjLnqu4QGKy31NVhx2y1_miu-KaawRIyy46MO99ZXy06QKQQz84t79Hzdz_GfZzhAtuFs4WNeD2dN2XfO89YIiWic2_AAkqNivo00PKr42NAG5et2XSoi>
while talking about Asian leaders. He has mocked Asian accents
<http://reappropriate.co/2015/08/trump-mocks-asian-speech-patterns-in-campaign-speech/>
on the campaign trail; he charged a reporter with asking a “nasty question”
about Covid testing while insinuating she was doing so
<https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52627604> because of her Asian
background. And he called <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHiDVPokUsY> Covid
“Kung-flu.”
