Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vaguely rebuked Donald Trump’s recent remarks about immigrants, invoking his wife, Elaine Chao.
CNN’s Manu Raju asked the Kentucky Republican about the former president’s controversial claim on Saturday that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
McConnell said, “Well, it strikes me that didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation.”
He did not explicitly answer Raju’s question about whether he was comfortable with his party’s leading presidential candidate using that language.
McConnell rarely weighs in publicly on matters relating to Trump. Their relationship soured after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Chao, a Taiwanese American, served as Trump’s transportation secretary from 2017 to 2021, when she resigned over his role in the Capitol attack.
Trump has since referred to Chao as McConnell’s “China-loving wife” and “Coco Chow,” attacks which were widely condemned as racist, including by Chao herself.
Trump set off a firestorm after telling rally attendees in New Hampshire over the weekend that immigrants are “pouring” into the U.S. from around the world and “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Many critics and commentators have likened Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler, who suggested in his fascist manifesto “Mein Kampf” that Jews and immigrants were poisoning the purity of German blood.