Donald Trump’s repeated bashing of his former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in appalling anti-Asian attacks is not only “repugnant” but politically moronic, a Bloomberg columnist warned Saturday.
Trump’s racism is stupidly alienating a powerful voting bloc with “rising influence,” wrote Robert A. George.
If the Republican Party doesn’t have the guts to confront Trump over his “ideological or moral” failings, “how about doing it for crass political purposes?” he asked.
George was pointedly referring to Trump’s relentless, blatantly racist attacks on Truth Social against Chao, apparently largely as a way to get back at her husband, Trump’s political nemesis Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — and because Chao quit Trump’s administration after the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Trump’s attacks echo his juvenile renaming of COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” — but are even worse, argued George.
Calling a Taiwanese American woman “Coco Chow” ... “crosses a line rarely seen in politics (at least if you don’t count Trump),” writes George.
He says that racist “name-mocking is, as Chao notes, painfully common for many Asian Americans”
Chao, who had remained silent about the attacks for month, finally told Politico in a statement earlier this week: “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation,” she added. Trump “doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
The blowback will be on Trump — and the Republicans, George warned. Trump’s behavior and the lack of Republican criticism is so “politically stupid,” he observed, because many Asian Americans appear open to Republican policies. But Trump’s “animus is almost pathological,” and he likely won’t rein himself in, nor be checked by his party, George noted.
He warned that if Trump “continues making racist comments about an Asian American woman who served more than capably in four Republican administrations (including his own) — while other Republicans say not a word in repudiation — well, the Democrats’ 2024 political ads practically write themselves. Especially if Trump is the nominee.”
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