Elaine Chao responds to Trump’s barrage of racist attacks on her

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For months, Donald Trump unleashed a series of thinly veiled racist comments about his former transportation secretary, the wife of his party’s Senate leader, to the relative silence of other GOP officials.

Days after her latest abuse, Elaine Chao issued a rare rebuke to the former president amid growing reports of anti-Asian hatred and shocking acts of violence affecting Asian American communities.

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 lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly used a racist moniker or variant China-loving wife on his Truth Social account to describe Ms. Chao, a Republican and the first Asian-American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet.

Her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is frequently criticized by Mr Trump for his insufficient deference to the former president, a rivalry that has accelerated in recent days with the admission of Republican leaders that officials GOP officials must negotiate with the Biden administration to avoid potentially devastating consequences of fighting the debt ceiling in Congress.

Mr. Trump also suggested that the GOP Senate leader was compromised by his wife’s connection to China. In October, Mr Trump said Mr McConnell wished death if he backed legislation backed by congressional Democrats.

Last month, Ms Chao refused to address former presidents’ continued use of a racist nickname for her and urged the media to avoid repeating it.

I mean, if it was the N-word or any other word, the media wouldn’t repeat it. But the media continually repeats her racist taunts, she told CNN. He tries to excite us. He says all kinds of outrageous things, and I don’t make it a point to answer any of them.

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Ms Chao resigned days before the end of Mr Trump’s term following the attack on the US Capitol staged by his supporters on January 6, 2021.

Our country witnessed a traumatic and entirely preventable event yesterday when supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed, she wrote in a letter to the Department of Transportation personnel a day after the assault. As I’m sure it is for many of you, it has troubled me deeply in ways that I simply cannot put aside.

Ms. Chao was born in Taiwan, moved to the United States in her youth and was naturalized as a citizen at 19.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to Politico that the former president’s remarks were aimed at his family’s troubling ties to communist China, though a report by the inspector general did not made no formal finding of ethics violations involving her family’s shipping company while she was in office.

Few GOP officials have condemned statements by former presidents; his former director of communications Alyssa Farah called his latest remarks racist.

This charged and racist rhetoric is dangerous, she said.

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