Who’s to Blame for GOP Chaos? “Coco Chow,” Says Trump in Another Racist Rant

Orit Ben-Ezzer/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.As Kevin McCarthy’s humiliating campaign to clinch the House speakership enters its second day, Donald Trump is calling on GOP lawmakers to unite and back the California Republican in an effort to prevent a “giant and embarrassing defeat.” McCarthy would do a “good job,” perhaps even a “great one,” the former president continued, striking a strangely milquetoast tone for a political endorsement.
Trump was far less tepid, however, over who was to blame for the GOP’s spectacular infighting. 
This—yet another bigoted attack by Trump against his own Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao—is at once typical of our racist former president and yet inexplicable. Chao has nothing to do with the current turmoil in the House, yet here she is, once again getting targeted on Trump’s sad alternate universe, TruthSocial.
So I’ll ask the question once again: How do you even write about the man’s anti-Asian racism at this point? I still don’t have an answer. But I do wonder whether Republicans simply find insults like “Coco Chow”—garbage that never seems to lead headlines—genuinely funny. Because Kevin McCarthy sure as hell isn’t sweating over this latest entry. One easily imagines the Matt Gaetzes of the party chortling, hard. Neither Chao nor the powerful Republican husband she apparently controls with the help of Beijing, Mitch McConnell, has ever said much in response—and Chao seems to believe that ignoring the racism will convince Trump to stop. I don’t know what the best option is, but let’s hear it for the party that can’t stop eating its own.