After making fun of Jeb Bush on Twitter for clumsily offending Asians with his Asian “anchor baby” remarks, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump used broken English and a bad accent to illustrate his past experience with Asian business partners.
"Negotiating with Japan, negotiating with China, when these people walk into the room, they don't say, 'Oh, hello, how's the weather, so beautiful outside, isn't it lovely? How are the Yankees doing? Oh they are doing wonderful. Great,'" said Trump, Tuesday night at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa. "They say, 'We want deal!'"
Trump then asked the crowd, “Who would you rather have negotiating against China, against Iran — what a deal that is, okay, you talk about incompetent people — against anybody? Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Trump?”
These remarks come at a point where both parties are beginning to take notice of the Asian American electorate — the fastest-growing group of voters in the country, expected to double in number by 2040, and which a 2014 study found was the least likely of all groups to be contacted by political parties.
“Coming on the heels of Jeb Bush’s use of the derogatory term ‘anchor babies’ and saying that term ‘is more related to Asian people,’” Representative Mike Honda (D-CA), Chair Emeritus of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) and Chair of CAPAC’s Immigration Task Force, told NBC News that Trump’s “offensive” parody “builds upon a disturbing narrative that is fueled by xenophobic speech and thinking.”
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“It’s really quite simple: you need another term for ‘anchor babies?’” continued Honda, addressing both candidates, “Call them what they are: Americans. And, yes, we do want a deal: the deal of citizenship guaranteed to every naturalized and natural-born citizen in the United States by the 14th Amendment of our Constitution.”