Among Senate Republicans, there’s been a range of opinions about Donald Trump echoing Hitler and condemning immigrants for “poisoning the blood of our country.” On the one hand, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the comments “horrible.” On the other, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama complained that the former president’s anti-immigrant vitriol should’ve been even “tougher.”
But of particular interest was the subtle rhetorical shot from the Senate GOP’s top leader. NBC News reported:
“It strikes me that it didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday. McConnell is married to Chao, who immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a child.
When it comes to his party’s likely presidential nominee, the Kentucky Republican tends to exercise caution, which made it even more notable when McConnell offered subtle criticisms of Trump’s “poisoning the blood” rhetoric.
The GOP leader didn’t elaborate, but I think I understand the point he intended to convey. If immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States, the argument goes, why did Trump tap an immigrant for his White House Cabinet?
As political pushback, this was certainly fair, though it might miss the larger significance of the controversy. Among the problems with the former president’s rhetoric was the inherent bigotry.
It’s against this backdrop that it’s worth remembering that Trump went after his former transportation secretary in overtly racist ways.
As regular readers might recall, it was just last fall when Trump publicly chided McConnell, writing online that the senator should “seek help and advise [sic] from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” referring to Chao. In the weeks and months that followed, Trump repeatedly targeted his former cabinet secretary, deriding her as “Coco Chow,” suggesting he finds juvenile racism entertaining. As 2023 got underway, the former president went so far as to publish another item that read, “Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown? Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China.” Eventually, Chao got sick of it. “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 said in a statement to Politico. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.” This is relevant anew in light of McConnell’s comments. The senator effectively chided his party’s likely nominee, suggesting that immigrants can’t be that bad if someone like Chao served on his team. The problem, of course, is that Trump targeted Chao with racism, too.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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