Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA), a Korean-American congresswoman, hammered her Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked Democrat opponent, Jay Chen, for saying “racist” comments towards her accent during a meet and greet at a Jewish synagogue last week.
The Democrat, running to unseat Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District, was caught on video, first reported by Fox News, commenting on the incumbent’s accent. While at a meet and greet on April 7 at B’nai Tzedek synagogue in Fountain Valley, California, Chen said, “Yeah, so she just had another town hall the other day. And, umm, it’s tough. Like, we’ve transcribed it.”
“You kind of need an interpreter to figure out exactly what she’s saying,” the CCP-linked Democrat went on to say, receiving laughter from the crowd. “The more she speaks, the better for us.”
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The Republican National Committee (RNC), which has made investments in the Asian Pacific Americans community by opening across the country by opening community center, also hammered Chen for his remarks.
“Democrats are proving once again that unless you fit their narrative and agree with them, you are fair game for racist attacks,” a spokesperson from the Republican National Committee said to Breitbart News. “Congresswoman Michelle Steel is an inspiration to the Asian Pacific American community and is proof that the American Dream is real. Jay Chen’s despicable comments are totally out of line, and he should apologize for using such racist language.”
A spokesperson for Steel’s campaign condemned the “racist” comments in a statement to Fox News and demanded an apology from the Democrat.
“America is a country built on immigrants,” the spokesperson told Fox. “Steel is a first-generation Korean American who speaks English as her third language, and these despicable, racist comments from Jay Chen have absolutely no place in our community.”
U.S. Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) attends a press conference about the response to an oil spill in the Pacific Ocean in Huntington Beach, California, on October 4, 2021. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“Chen owes everyone an explanation, particularly following recent reports he continues backing the Chinese Communist Party’s Confucius Institutes in our educational system,” the spokesperson said, which refers to a report by the Washington Free Beacon in February, claiming Chen helped bring the Confucius Classroom program to Hacienda La Puente school district.
The Free Beacon revealed that Chen “spearheaded” the effort to bring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sponsored educational program into his community’s classroom when he was a school board member in 2010. The program, funded and run by the CCP’s Ministry of Education, brings “teachers and curriculum materials to teach their students Chinese language and culture,” similar to the Confucius Institutes on college campuses, the report stated.
However, the effort was considered unsuccessful when the district rejected the CCP-backed funding for teachers and curriculum materials following pushback from local parents in 2011, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. Despite the objection, the Democrat still defended his option saying he didn’t “see anything sinister about using books from China” given that “practically everything we use is made in China.”
Under former President Donald Trump, the Confucius Institutes were designated by the State Department as a “well-funded propaganda effort” from the CCP and recognized for “advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.”
However, this is not the first time the Democrat, endorsed by Planned Parenthood, NewDem Action Fund, and the California Democratic Party, made tasteless comments toward Steel.
Fox noted that Chen has also made other comments towards the Republican incumbent during an Indivisible Zoom call in late March. During the call, he called Steel “incoherent” while claiming that “all she does is rely on Republican talking points fed by her husband.”
Reportedly, English is the congresswoman’s third language after Korean and Japanese. Steel, one of the first Korean-American women elected to Congress, said in November 2020, after defeating former Rep. Harley Rouda (D-CA), that her accent is a part of her and that she “stands for the American Dream.”
The 2022 midterm also is not Chen’s first time running for Congress. The CCP-linked Democrat had an unsuccessful run in 2012 when he challenged then-Republican incumbent Rep. Ed Royce and lost by 40,000 votes.
Update:
Following the news of the Chen making the “racist” comments towards the Republican incumbent congresswoman, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) responded in a series of tweets. McCarthy, the highest ranking Republican in the House called on the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democrat’s campaign arm to “disavow and remove Jay Chen from their “Red to Blue” program,” which is ran by the committee to get Democrats elected.
Disgraceful remarks like those uttered by Jay Chen have no place in our nation’s political discourse & @DCCC must act unless they approve of these racist remarks. Rep. Steel is an inspiration to first generation Americans & I look forward to serving w/ her for many yrs to come.
— Kevin McCarthy (@kevinomccarthy) April 14, 2022
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
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