It seems absolutely no one was or is safe from Donald Trump’s disgusting, racist, bigoted, xenophobic attacks — not even his own officials or the spouse of one of his formerly staunchest allies.
According to excerpts from the book, This Will Not Pass, by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, obtained and reported on by Business Insider, Trump once echoed conspiracy theory-laden, xenophobic attacks against his former Transportation Secretary, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao — claiming she had compromising ties to China during an interview with the book’s authors.
The interview in which he made the nasty remarks took place in mid-April 2021 at his Mar-a-Lago home/resort and the reporters claim Trump launched a sharp criticism of Chao as well as her husband, Republican Kentucky lawmaker McConnell.
“Not content merely to insult McConnell as a legislative leader and tactician, Trump attacked the Kentucky senator’s family in racist language, smearing a woman who had served in his Cabinet for all but two of the final weeks of his presidency,” Martin and Burns wrote in This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, that’s set to release on Tuesday.
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Speaking about McConnell’s wife, his own former administration official, Trump told the authors during the interview, she is “not an innocent babe in the woods.” Chao has made a decades-long career as a top GOP official throughout several Republican administrations, including the Reagan and both Bush administrations, and served as George W. Bush’s Labor secretary.
Trump has, of course, planted a target on Mitch McConnell’s back, ever since the KY senator and senate party leader refused to support his 2020 election Big Lie.
A prior report from the New York Times notes that McConnell’s wife was born in Taiwan and emigrated to the US as a child. The report notes that Chao’s family still owns a New York-based shipping company that does regularly benefit from the close ties between China and the US.
In the interview with Martin and Burns, Trump suggested that these ties left Chao compromised in her government position, despite the fact that she served in Donald Trump’s cabinet until the final two weeks of his term, when she resigned in protest over the deadly January 6th Capitol attack.
“Just ask China — ask China whether she is or not,” Trump told the Times reporters in what they described as “alluding to online conspiracy theories.”
As mentioned above, these attacks against McConnell and his wife have been ongoing since the lawmakers push back against Trump’s election claims and inciting of the January 6th violence, with the now ex-president claiming shortly after the 2020 election that Mitch was “too busy working on deals with China for his wife.”
Believe me, the irony of Donald Trump accusing someone of being compromised through ties to a foreign country is not lost on us. At all.
Read the full analysis of the book’s excerpt from Business Insider here.
Featured image via screen capture
