I guess he’s forgotten all about this:
Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao called out former President Donald Trump for his racist broadsides aimed at her and his other anti-Asian rhetoric.
Trump, who is ramping up his 2024 presidential campaign, has repeatedly made racist attacks on Chao, who served in his administration, in recent months. Trump’s attacks often involve jabs at her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has drawn Trump’s ire since he publicly condemned Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump tried to baselessly suggest that Chao had a connection to the classified documents recently found in President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and an office in Washington.
“Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” Trump wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China.”
In a statement shared with NBC News condemning Trump’s attacks, first reported by Politico, Chao, who immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a child, spoke out about the racism Asian Americans have faced.
“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,” Chao said. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said “people should stop feigning outrage and engaging in controversies that exist only in their heads.”
Chao had avoided responding to Trump’s attacks. In response to a Truth Social post last month in which Trump again used a racial slur against her, Chao said in an interview with CNN that she thought “it would be very helpful if the media does not just repeat that racist tweet.”
After that, it’s hard to believe that McConnell would use his wife’s appointment as proof that Trump isn’t a racist, but there you are. He is just as shameless as Trump.
And remember, McConnell’s legacy of democracy destruction is almost as important as Trump’s. He showed to the nation and the world that norms don’t matter when he installed Trump nominees Gorsuch and Barrett on the high court despite breaking every understood process to get it done and then smugly reversed himself just three years later to accomplish the same thing. They are entwined in history forever. And despite his supposed antipathy toward Trump, I don’t think he minds it much at all. He got what he wanted. That’s all he cares about. They are very much alike.
Happy Hollandaise!