How do you say \u201cwhoops\u201d in Vietnamese? Derek Tran would like to know.<\/p>\n
Tran, 43, is one of those unelected Democrat fresh faces running for Republican-controlled House seats that the media loves to highlight every election cycle. The pattern is the same, but the story always comes with a twist.<\/p>\n
This time, it\u2019s that Tran \u2014 who seeks to oust GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in California\u2019s 45th Congressional District \u2014 is the child of Vietnamese refugees and was billed as the \u201cthe only candidate that speaks fluent Vietnamese,\u201d according to the New York Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s no small deal in a district that spans Los Angeles and Orange Counties and where where the largest demographic<\/a> is those of Asian descent, who make up over 37 percent of the population. Vietnamese is also the third-most spoken household language in the district.<\/p>\n On Friday, Tran received a glowing write-up in the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, noting that the district \u201chas the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam, but has never had a Vietnamese American representative in Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats hope Tran can buck that trend. To beat Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, 69, a formidable fundraiser with deep ties to the Orange County GOP, Tran is pushing to win over Vietnamese voters, many of whom have been loyal Republicans since the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at nearby Pomona College<\/a>, said that he has a shot, given that \u201cethnicity and the shared identity between candidates and voters does tend to matter.\u201d (That being said, Steel is also of Asian descent, and her campaign \u201cquestioned whether Tran can win a significant percentage of Vietnamese voters, saying their own analysis of primary precinct data showed Steel received more votes in the most Vietnamese-heavy areas of the district than Tran and [primary challenger Kim] Nguyen-Penaloza combined.\u201d)<\/p>\n That kind of stuff got pushed to the background in the profile, however, and you read a lot more piffle like this: \u201cTran said that his campaign has been buoyed by Vietnamese Americans who are thrilled to have a candidate who \u2018can finally represent us.\u2019 He said some conservative voters have been swayed by his family\u2019s story and his military service; he spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve, including a stint on active duty in 2003 on a homeland security detail at Georgia\u2019s Ft. Stewart.\u201d<\/p>\n However, stuck at the end of what might as well have been a paid political advertisement<\/a> for Tran was this paragraph: \u201cTran said Vietnamese was his first language, but he has lost his childhood fluency. He understands most of what\u2019s said to him, he said, but uses a translator \u2018because I don\u2019t want any of my messaging to get lost from my broken Vietnamese.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Wait, what?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s rewind the clock a day, because I think the Times\u2019 piece reads somewhat differently before a New York Post<\/a> story challenged Tran\u2019s claim to be a fluent Vietnamese speaker.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring a Feb. 23 interview with Saigon Entertainment Television, a California-based, Vietnamese-language TV station, Tran stumbled right out of the gate when asked a question in his purported native tongue,\u201d the outlet reported.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018In my 10 years working as a lawyer, I\u2019ve done a lot of cases dealing with employment law, discrimination, harassment and really wrongful termination,\u2019 Tran told his interviewer, before going on to discuss his legal career.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018The question was how many years you serve in the Army,\u2019 she said. \u2018So let\u2019s address that and then I will cover the rest.’\u201d<\/p>\n Forget AI putting white collar professionals out of work. Let\u2019s worry about reality putting satirists out of work. That seems to be a more pressing concern these days.<\/p>\n For the rest of the interview, he leaned on the translator. That became a common theme in his appearances with the Vietnamese community in the district since.<\/p>\n \u201cFour days later, the same translator sat down with Tran for an interview broadcast on Little Saigon TV, asking questions of the candidate in English while repeating his responses in Vietnamese after he spoke,\u201d the Post reported. \u201cTran used the same system when speaking to Asian American voters during a June 8 campaign event.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnother appearance shows him reading a speech in Vietnamese off of a sheet of paper and then reading the speech in English,\u201d the Post noted, implying he basically got through his halting remarks by relying on phonetically reciting a language he\u2019s supposedly fluent in.<\/p>\n The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee<\/a> initially attacked any intimation that Tran was misrepresenting his fluency.<\/p>\n \u201cArmy Veteran, small business owner, and Vietnamese American Derek Tran is the pride and joy of Little Saigon, which is one of many reasons MAGA Michelle Steel and her desperate NRCC lackeys know they will lose this November,\u201d said DCCC spokesperson Dan Gottlieb via a statement. \u201cInstead of launching bad faith attacks on the cultural heritage of the son of Vietnamese refugees \u2014 and openly insulting Vietnamese Americans from multiple generations all across California\u2019s 45th \u2014 maybe Steel can find the courage to debate Derek and face up to her years of unchecked corruption in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Except it wasn\u2019t a \u201cbad faith attack,\u201d since Tran had been very,\u00a0very<\/em> clear about his bilingualism. In addition to the \u201conly candidate that speaks fluent Vietnamese\u201d statement, he also told the Orange County Register in October of 2023 that, \u201cBeing able to communicate with these older Vietnamese[,] I plan on organizing door-to-doors [sic] with my campaign.\u201d The implication was that this didn\u2019t involve bringing along a translator in tow.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, on the same day that the Los Angeles Times hagiography appeared, a separate article was published in the Post in which Tran acknowledged speaking only \u201cbroken Vietnamese,\u201d does not have fluency in the language, and uses a translator \u201cbecause I don\u2019t want any of my messaging to get lost.\u201d<\/p>\n So, in other words, he lied. Completely unlike other Democrats<\/a>, of course.<\/p>\n I\u2019m assuming the L.A. Times wasn\u2019t planning on showcasing this side of Tran, however, when they initially started putting this profile together \u2014 hence, the hastily appended penultimate paragraph about that broken Vietnamese<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the L.A. Times being the L.A. Times, they managed to smooth things over with the final graf: \u201cVietnamese elders, Tran said, have told him that they appreciate that he is making an effort.\u201d<\/p>\n Right. Whoops.<\/p>\n This article appeared originally on The Western Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Democrats Love to Lie: House Dem Candidate Comes Clean About His Native Tongue After Report Outs Him<\/a> appeared first on The Gateway Pundit<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you say \u201cwhoops\u201d in Vietnamese? Derek Tran would like to know. Tran, 43, is one of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n