- A growing number of conservatives are condemning Donald Trump’s most recent Truth Social diatribe.
- Trump referred to former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao with a racist nickname.
- Rep. Liz Cheney and several former Trump White House aides and advisors have denounced the post.
Several prominent conservatives this week denounced former President Donald Trump’s racist remarks toward Elaine Chao, a one-time member of Trump’s own cabinet and wife to GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Sen. Liz Cheney, however, remains the only Republican member of Congress thus far to explicitly condemn the former president for his xenophobic comments.
Trump on Friday unleashed a barrage of insults against Senate Minority Leader McConnell in a Truth Social tirade accusing the Kentucky lawmaker of approving “trillions of dollars worth of Democrat sponsored bills” because he “hates Donald J, Trump.”
“He has a DEATH WISH,” Trump wrote in a marked escalation of his usual political rhetoric.
But the former president didn’t stop there: He proceeded to insult McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served in Trump’s own administration, hurling a racist nickname at the Asian American woman.
McConnell, he suggested, “must immediately seek help and advise (sic) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
Representatives for McConnell, Chao, and Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Trump’s diatribe immediately drew a storm of condemnation — primarily from Democratic lawmakers and liberal-leaning pundits, but Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday joined the dissenting chorus.
“When you see former President Trump just in the last 24 hours suggesting in a pretty thinly veiled way, using words that could well cause violence against the Republican leader of the Senate, saying he has a death wish and then, you know, launching an absolutely despicable, racist attack against Secretary Chao, Leader McConnell’s wife, and then you watch the fact that nobody in my party will say that’s unacceptable,” Cheney said during at an event held at Syracuse University, according to The Hill.
The Wyoming representative said Trump’s comments were “not acceptable” and suggested every member of her own party should be “required” to concur, the outlet reported.
Cheney has long been an outspoken Trump critic and will depart Congress next year after losing her August primary to a Trump-backed candidate.
AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
In castigating Trump on Monday, Cheney became the only Republican member of Congress to publicly decry the former president’s remarks. McConnell himself has yet to address the situation.
Sen. Rick Scott haphazardly waded into the controversy over the weekend on CNN, saying it was “never okay to be racist.” But the Florida lawmaker stopped short of rebuking Trump directly.
“I think you always have to be careful, you know, if you’re in the public eye, how you say things,” Scott said. “You want to make sure you’re inclusive.”
But while scores of other Republican lawmakers remain quiet on the matter, a growing number of conservative figures have since offered their own disapproval of Trump’s attack.
Right-wing pundit Scott Jennings, a former McConnell aide, told CNN that “every Republican” should be able to disavow what he called Trump’s “assassination instructions” against McConnell.
“This is outrageous, it’s beyond the pale, every Republican ought to say so,” Jennings said.
Meanwhile, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as a White House communications director during the Trump administration and is now a co-host at “The View,” condemned Trump in a Saturday tweet.
“He’s not even trying to hide the racism at this point,” she wrote.
And on CBS News on Monday, Marc Short, a senior advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence who previously served as director of legislative affairs in the Trump administration, said the former president’s “racial slur” against Chao was “obviously wrong.
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