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I confess my optimism that all the calls for unity after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump could end the polarization that has crippled our nation’s politics for years.

And then I saw the first three days of the Republican National Convention, where Asian Americans were essentially… invisible.

When one of us showed up, we were seen as servile (Nikki Haley kissing the ring), sycophantic (Vivek Ramaswamy eager to please so brilliantly), or ornaments for Trump (Usha Vance, the California Yalie who fell for the “Hillbilly Elegy” guy).

Or we acted like a stand-in mouthpiece for strongman Trumpism.

“Under Joe Biden, millions of illegal aliens flooded our borders,” said Hung Cao, a U.S. Senate hopeful in Virginia from the main stage. Cao is typical of the Trumpiest Asian Americans in the nation--the Vietnamese community—38 percent of whom say they’re voting for Trump, according to the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey. A Naval Academy grad who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, Cao can go extreme alpha MAGA in a heartbeat.

“As an immigrant to this great country, let me be very clear to everyone who comes here,” Cao said. “Join us for the American dream, if you’re willing to obey the American laws and embrace the American culture. Because I did.”

In other words, freedom be damned, do it the Trump way, or else. It was a glimpse of the impending American authoritarianism in yellowface.

Cao’s anti-immigrant diatribe was just one example. Other Republican speakers, predominantly white, repeatedly chimed in about immigrants being “rapists, murderers, and sex traffickers” responsible for all crimes in our society and the cause of our fleeting sense of safety.

Or you can just obey the laws you feel like obeying. Like Peter Navarro, the 75-year-old Harvard graduate and former Trump advisor who didn’t feel like responding to a subpoena from the Jan. 6 congressional committee and chose instead to serve four months in prison.

Released on Thursday, Navarro stood before the convention and said, “If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”

Only Trump has promised if elected, he will round up and deport all undocumented people. Maybe even his enemies?

That’s what passed for unity rhetoric at an RNC happy to unite the Trump GOP, but not the rest of the country–those of us who can’t seem to square how the law-and-order party wants to elect a convicted felon with 34 guilty verdicts as their president.

And I thought we’d see a change after that Saturday shooting had many of us praying for Trump to live.

THE PROBLEM WITH VANCE

The first sign that nothing would change came on the convention’s first day, when Trump chose J.D. Vance, a 39-year-old junior Republican senator from Ohio, as his running mate.

Vance is no Gandhi. He’s as polarizing as Trump, and that’s just among Republicans. Hated by moderates and loved by MAGA extremists, Vance is seen as the next generation Trump. He’s a former “Never Trumper” who in 2016, called Trump an American Hitler.

He’s seen the light, then he turned it off.

Vance and Trump have made up since Vance ran for the Senate and Trump openly chided him for being an ass-kisser.

He’s qualified.

The perfect veep? On Saturday, Vance blamed the assassination attempt on Joe Biden’s rhetoric that called Trump “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”

Some politicos called that a disqualifying bald face lie. Maybe that’s why Vance has the beard.

But Vance knew what he was doing. Defending Trump at all costs. And that was before he got the job.

Vance is for a national abortion ban, even in the case of rape or incest. No exceptions, unless a mother’s life is in danger. It’s a slight variance from Trump, who has wavered and now thinks states should decide. On other issues, Vance and Trump are aligned. Vance is against Ukraine funding. And he’s anti-immigrant to the core. Vance wants immigration and everything else to be merit-based. Admissions to the U.S. should be like admission to Yale?

Vance has adopted the conservative love of merit, discounting that even the word “merit” can be very subjective. Vance went from The Ohio State University to Yale Law School. Does he really think he got into the white eastern establishment enclave that is Yale without some special push, or affirmative action?
 

CLASS OVER RACE

As he established in his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” (a book that was encouraged by his Yale prof Amy Chua of Tiger Mom fame), Vance’s family from Appalachia settled in Middletown, Ohio.His underprivileged working-class background is the kind once used as an example in the affirmative action debates in the ‘80s. Does class trump race? Or is race more important? Who gets the leg up? People of color like the Cosby kids? Or poor whites?

Clearly, Vance is all about class. In his speech, he told a story about how his Mamaw (grandma) had 19 loaded guns around the house (that must have been endearing to the Trump 2A gun nuts, and intriguing to some elites). One time, his grandmother noticed Vance was spending too much time with a kid who was known to be a drug dealer and told him if he ever hung out with “that kid again, she would run him over with her car.”

“That’s true,” Vance told the crowd amused by the potential of attempted murder. “And she said ‘J.D., no one will ever find out about it.’”

The crowd laughed and cheered “Mamaw.”

It was Vance’s version of Trump’s “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

Vance is working his way up to that.

Between his stories, Vance took long pauses to react to his crowd. He was present with the audience, connecting live, and likely also to the television crowd. You can see how he would be effective with voters in rust belt states that look at him with pride,

At one point, Vance talked about a young family member lament how they couldn’t afford a home when they entered the workforce like their baby boomer parents did.

Vance used it to explain the absurd cost of housing as “the result of many failures.” Here’s his shorthand: It’s Wall Street barons crashing the economy, American builders going out of business. Tradesman scrambled for jobs, houses stopped being built. The lack of good jobs led to stagnant wages. “And then the Democrats flooded this country with millions of illegal aliens. So citizens had to compete with people who shouldn’t be here for precious housing.“

With Vance and this unified GOP, “illegal immigrants” are the preferred scapegoats for the lack of affordable housing.

USHA VANCE

And that’s why it was nice to see him introduced by his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, the Asian American presence near the top of the ticket.

Born in California outside of San Diego, Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Usha went to Yale for college, and then to the law school where she met Vance.

Formerly a litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson, she also clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, of the Supreme Court, as well as Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amul Thapar.

A one-time Democrat, Usha Vance and her husband reminded me of a story by the anti-fascist writer George Orwell. In his novel, “Burmese Days,” Orwell discovered his hatred for fascism while working as a colonial cop. He saw up close the unfairness of life, and how an educated dark- skinned Burmese man could never enter the front door of an exclusive white English private club. But a Burmese woman could enter–through the back door as a mistress or concubine.

And here was Usha Vance, an accomplished Yale lawyer in her own right, deferring to her chosen white husband, a former hillbilly given access to an exclusive white club.

“I promise you this,” J.D. Vance said in closing. “I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”

Sure, but for Vance, is that Yale? The Appalachias? Venture Capital row in Silicon Valley? The Senate floor? Or the state of his ambition?

Vance should know better. But then he’s the “Never Trumper” who saw the light, then turned it off.

That makes him more dangerous than you can imagine. The walking contradiction, he’s Mamaw’s son and his unique American Dream. He’s Trump’s second and MAGA’s future, who wants to take immigration back 100 years to 1924 when the most racist xenopobic immigration law was passed in America.

It was a time when intermarriages between whites and Asians were banned in many states.

TRUMP ON DECK

But Vance is just the bottom of the ticket.

The top of the ticket is still Trump, on mute for the first three days of the RNC. The former president entered the convention hall every night like a WWE wrestler, then sat in the VIP booth, the martyr as monarch holding court.

Trump’s time is on the final night of the convention. Will we see the change then? More humanizing of the demons? Granddaughters and grandmaws? Tofu for the red meat crowd?

During the convention, Trump has discovered the power of silence. No gag order needed. He’s just a guy with a wounded right ear covered by a white square bandage that looks like an Air Pod on steroids. His white badge of victimhood.

After the first three nights, and with impending news of the Democrats in disarray, I don’t expect any change.

Trump is ready to speak. And I doubt it will improve the silence.

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NOTE: I will talk about this column and other matters on “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” my AAPI micro-talk show. Live @2p Pacific. Livestream on Facebook; my YouTube channel; and Twitter. Catch the recordings on www.amok.com.