By Emil Amok Guillermo

I know Donald Trump’s moves.

Among my media incarnations, I was one of the first Asian American hot talk radio hosts in the country in Washington, DC, San Francisco and Sacramento. I worked with Morton Downey Jr. I went up against Rush Limbaugh. I know their tricks.

As does Donald Trump.

To fill a four-hour show, you need fresh topics from the news. But what a gift when you can make news simply by being?

The problem? Trump is more than just a cow burp away from the presidency. He is the president.

Feel like a tariff today? Deportees to Guantanamo? Cut federal funds on a whim?

Great for the show. Not for the country.

So, I wasn’t surprised when the convicted felon and president, made his first comments on the DC air disaster last week.

Were you hoping for something more personal and human? Maybe saying something about the first victims whose names were released, like 16-year-old Spencer Lane, a Korean adoptee, who was living his dream life in the U.S., as one of the great future stars of U.S. Figure skating.

There were six Asian Americans who died in the crash all: Angela Yang, Jinna Ha, her mother Jin Han, Azra Hussain Raza, and Sarah Lee Best.

Another Asian national, Philippine National Police Colonel Pergentino Malabed was also on the PSA jet.

And, of course, no shoutouts from Trump.

In the beginning, Trump stuck to a script and was solemn at first, talking about this “dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capitol and our nation’s history”

He talked about his heart being shattered and how he and the First Lady were there to wipe away the tears.

Still, he was trying. This is the paragraph to fixate on:

“In minutes like this, the difference between Americans fade to nothing compared to the bonds of affection and loyalty that unite us all both as Americans and even as nations. We are one family and today we are all heartbroken, we’re all searching for answers…”

I wish he believed all that. Or did we all think from the start it was just patented horse manure?

Because that’s the guy America needs more of —that Trump—the guy who was at the Carter Funeral. We need the unifier. The Trump that dissolves our differences and brings us together. Not the disruptor, the Musk enabler, the destroyer of democracy, the fledgling autocrat.

Not the talk show guy.

For a few short minutes we got the opposite of all that—the good Trump.

Then in a wink, he turned everything he’d said into a lie.

With a hard pivot, Trump turned to his talk show demons who dictated his actions.

Divide. Polarize. Get a response.

And it’s all just his opinion, not facts about what caused the crash.

According to Trump, it was all due to the DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies of previous administrations.

“I put safety first,” Trump said. “Obama, Bide,n and the Democrats put policy first.”

His proof?

“Common sense,” Trump said, which is to say there was no proof. It was just another swipe at minorities and people of color being inferior and less qualified than the Trump bro standard, white men.

And all without knowing the true facts of the incident. Who was in air traffic control? Or the pilots involved. The NTSB hadn’t even begun an investigation that could take years. Yet, Trump was willing to rile up the country with his racist diatribe that people of color and minorities were the cause of the crash.

Incidentally, the employment stats of air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists by gender and race are about 78 percent male, and 72 percent white, according to Axios.

Hispanics are just 14 percent; Blacks, 14 percent; Asians, 3 percent.

Stats like that point to the need for a more diverse workforce in that sector. But Trump believes white is right and in the racist notion that hiring women and minorities means hiring “unqualified” people.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

The air disaster was there for Trump’s to exploit, and so he did. What it really provided was a major distraction—from everything Trump is doing in the first two weeks. He is more than just hitting the ground running. He is detonating the material for the implosion of the American government. The firing of careerists at the Justice Department and the FBI to be replaced by loyalists?  Elon Musk’s DOGE crew has access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems? The coming trade war he’s starting with tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China?

Trump used the crash to mask his crashing of our American government.

SHIELDING HIS UNQUALIFIED NOMINEES

It also helped shield Trump’s own undeniably unqualified minority nominees who were being grilled on the Hill.

Kash Patel, the man who would be Trump’s loyal FBI bulldog, was exposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse as being one who would go after Trump critics in the media, while going soft on Jan.6 loyalists who are now part of Trump’s unofficial militia. Patel was also called unqualified and untrustworthy by Republican appointees.

Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard, up for national intelligence director, had a hard time answering Republican’s yes or no questions about whether Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower now exiled in Russia, was a traitor. Should she be trusted with our national secrets? No.

RFK Jr., whom Trump wants to shake up health care in America, sounded like a patrician who doesn’t know the difference between Medicare or Medicaid, let alone good vaccines or bad vaccines. His opinion seems driven by money. He would be a danger to Americans.

In the meantime, as people watch the news or discuss DEI, what gets left out of the discussion?

Asian Americans.

LEFT OUT AGAIN?

And it’s not just by the Fox News types. 

CNN’s Abby Phillip, whom I like, even did it while criticizing Trump.

“We can’t ignore the divisiveness of it. The way in which it is literally villainizing and putting a target on the back of women, Black people, Hispanic people,” said Phillip on her Saturday show on CNN.  Then, when she realized she needed to be inclusive added to the litany, “gay people, trans people, that’s happening too.”

And Asian Americans?  Are we implied? We went missing.

Maybe we’re left out because it was the Asian students who sued Harvard to end affirmative action in U.S. higher ed.  But they were a small minority and used by right-wing anti-affirmative action advocates.

Maybe it’s because there’s still strong Trump support in our community. But the vast majority of AAPI are not Trump supporters. Election polling showed around 60 percent were pro-affirmative action. Then again, maybe it’s the model minority tag. Our stereotype precedes us.

But make no mistake, DEI programs have always helped Asian Americans. Now that many programs have been revised, neutered or killed, they surely won’t be as helpful now.

We should mourn that, since that’s the president’s doing. And those of us who have been helped in the past should speak out.

 But first, we shouldn’t get pulled down by Trump. The national tragedy of the air disaster is not over.

There are still unrecovered bodies in the Potomac River.

We should mourn the dead from that DC crash. All of them, not just the Asian and Asian Americans. All of them. And hope it never happens again. I am sensing human factors will play a part in the cause of the crash. It won’t be because of their race or lack of intellect. The NTSB will find that out soon enough.

Until then, let’s focus on who was lost and remember them.

And turn the channel on Trump’s talk show games.

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist and commentator. He’s written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995.

Watch his micro-talk show “Emil Amok’s Takeout/What Does an Asian American Think?” on www.YouTube.com/emilamok1  Or join him on http://www.patreon.com/emilamok

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