Well, this is MSNBC, so this take on the Charlottesville tragedy isn’t unusual. It doesn’t make it any less annoying, however. We all know about the media’s blowup about President Trump’s remarks at a presser in Trump Tower on Tuesday. It was supposed to be about infrastructure, hence why Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was there. Yet, questions from the press solely focused on the violence that broke out between white nationalist and far left protesters, of which Trump placed blame on both sides. The various melees that broke out resulted in scores of people injured and one woman killed when a white nationalist plowed through a group of counter demonstrators. That’s what makes this different. As I’ve said ad nauseum, both sides are terrible. Both groups consist of violent bullying thugs, but Antifa—while violent in nature, didn’t kill anybody last Saturday. So, everything’s gone off the hinges again, including the commentary.
MSNBC’s political analyst Steve Schmidt, who helmed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said that Chao, while a good person, was now complicit in white supremacy. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle was outraged that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t condemn President Trump for this presser, noting that the president “humiliated” his wife (via Newsbusters):
STEPHANIE RUHLE: We heard nothing from Mitch McConnell, whose own Asian-American wife had to stand there, humiliated by her own president. Why won’t these Republican leaders call the President out? I cannot imagine those young white males wielding torches are going to get them elected.
STEVE SCHMIDT: Elaine Chao is a good person. She has served the country in public service for a long time. But now she will be indelibly marked by this, standing behind as a prop while the President gives sucker to white supremacist groups. And she has a decision to make this morning. She’s complicit in this, an enabler of it, and really now a fellow traveler with these groups if she doesn’t resign her office.
She’s not in the national command authority. She’s not there just in case there’s an escalation with North Korea like you hope Generals McMaster and Mattis and Kelly will be. But for people like Gary Cohn, the decision that they’ve made obviously, if they don’t resign and resign soon, is they crave the power more than doing the right thing.
Granted, Trump did a piss-poor job in saying some things about the violence in Virginia, but resign or otherwise be known as being an agent of white supremacy? That’s nonsense. Trump isn’t a politician. His remarks weren’t the best they could be concerning this incident, but he didn’t announce that he was joining the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations. I know liberals felt that way, but that’s not remotely true. Also, the Left just need to shut up about pretending to care about Ms. Chao because they really didn’t come to her defense when she was the victim of racism during McConnell’s 2014 re-election campaign. Does anyone remember when Democrats pretty much said that Elaine Chao was not an American?
"She’s not from Kentucky; she’s Asian," they said. Oh, and referring to her as McConnell’s “Chinese wife.” Chao was naturalized at age 19. Oh, and the calls to Google Ms. Chao because you’ll find out that she’s Asian (like that was some revelation). Yes, the yellow peril tactics were deployed in the Bluegrass State. That was just three years ago. Yet, it stretches further than that (via Time) [emphasis mine]:
Perhaps the only thing that really angers McConnell is when Chao is attacked. This has happened before, in 1996, when surrogates for his opponent that year (Democrat Steve Beshear, who is now governor of Kentucky) started saying, “It’s time to elect an All-American family to represent Kentucky.”
“It was a racial slur in my view and it infuriated the Senator,” says Billy Piper, a longtime former McConnell aide, who remains close with the leader. “He is not ever going to take it when she gets attacked.”
Chao is proud of her family’s history. Not only did they struggle against communism in a very personal way, but her father came to the U.S. with nothing and built a multi-million dollar shipping business.
And that legacy of hard work rubbed off on Chao, who wanted to give back to the country that gave her family so much. She graduated from Mount Holyoke and Harvard Business School before becoming a White House fellow in the Reagan Administration. She served as deputy Transportation Secretary under George H. W. Bush and director of the Peace Corps. In the Clinton era, Chao was named the head of the United Way before becoming Secretary of Labor for all eight years under George W. Bush.
Ms. Chao, you’re continuing your career serving our country. Stay right where you are, ma’am. Don’t budge because some liberals on television don’t like the president.
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