“Somehow . . . I don’t know what it is. The Vietnamese community loves me. And I love them.”
Donald Trump’s remarks at a campaign stop in Northern Virginia were greeted with chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A. . .” The Republican Party nominee was speaking before a small group of supporters at Truong Tien, a restaurant on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.
An eatery in an Asian shopping mall is not a typical venue for a candidate better known for addressing large rallies in the rural heartland. However, Vietnamese Americans are among the former president’s most loyal supporters.
In the 2020 election, 48 percent of voters with Vietnamese heritage cast their ballots for Trump compared to 36 percent for Joe Biden. A 2023 report by the Pew Research Center concluded that Vietnamese Americans “stand out” as the most conservative group among Asian American voters.
Will the right-leaning community cast their ballots for Trump in November?
A July report by the Asian American Voter Survey showed the GOP candidate’s popularity with Vietnamese Americans had gone down. Among those who intended to vote in November, the former president had lost 10 percentage points since 2020. Trump’s favorability rating stood at 42 percent compared to Kamala Harris at 45 percent. However, the survey was conducted before Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Trump’s anti-China rhetoric resonated strongly with Vietnamese Americans in 2020. “The depth of anti-communist feeling in the Vietnamese community, which includes many military veterans and former government officials, meant that it has always leaned strongly Republican,” explained Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author drew upon the community’s wartime experience for his 2015 novel “The Sympathizer,” which recently aired as a TV series.
Some die-hard Trump supporters even participated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol grounds. The defunct yellow and red banner of South Vietnam was spotted at multiple locations, and five rioters of “Vietnamese ancestry” were charged, among them a former police officer from Houston. In an essay for the Washington Post, Nguyen argued that the flag-waving American and Vietnamese nationalists shared “a radicalized nostalgia for a lost country and a lost cause.”
Trump stopped at the restaurant in Falls Church to drum up support for Hung Cao, a Republican contender for one of the Senate seats in Virginia. Speaking at the Republican National Convention in July, the former Navy veteran recalled the dramatic events that brought his family to the U.S. “We escaped from Vietnam just days before Saigon fell to the Communists,” said Cao. As a Senate hopeful, he vowed to crack down on crime and illegal immigration. “We need alpha males, we need meat eaters right now,” he told a Virginia TV station.
His opponent called him a “MAGA extremist” who was “out of step with our priorities.” Former Vice Presidential candidate, Tim Kaine has a 10-point polling lead over Cao and is expected to retain his Senate seat. Since 2008, Virginia has voted for the Democratic Party’s nominee in every presidential election. In late August, Harris had a slight edge over Trump in the polls. But the former president remained optimistic about his party’s chances. “I’m not the average Republican . . . and neither are you,” he told Cao at the restaurant.
“He’s very friendly,” said Thanh Huong Thi Truong, the owner and chef of Truong Tien. She was amused by Trump’s punch lines but appeared non-committal about her political leanings. An attendee at the event told the Washington Post the chef’s views on the election could be summed up in one word: “Switzerland.”
Trump’s entourage ordered several bags of take-out food. One item was the signature, “rice with seven dishes,” a sampler featuring royal cuisine from Hue. “I love Vietnamese food . . . more than the food I like the people,” the former president told the gathering.
The tab came to $60. Trump reportedly left a tip several times larger than the actual bill.