Donald Trump’s 2020 team poll-tested idea of expelling all Chinese scientists from US, new book says
- In search of a hot campaign issue, aides explored ideas like letting Americans sue China in court, and sending the National Guard into cities amid social unrest
- The team was hoping to find a policy that sparked a similar reaction to Trump’s proposed Muslim ban in 2015, according to the authors of ‘This Will Not Pass’
Former US president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign tested a number of bizarre and in some cases xenophobic ideas as his team sought to find a policy that sparked the kind of reaction like his 2015 plan to ban Muslims from entering the US, according to a new book.
According to This Will Not Pass, top Trump aides mused about giving Americans the ability to sue China in court and tested the reaction to expelling Chinese scientists from the US, and sending the National Guard into cities amid social unrest.
“John would send me these emails that went on for pages with these crazy f***ing questions. “I’d say to him: ‘Where are you getting these questions from?” Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio told the book’s authors, New York Times political reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.
It is unclear what questions he was referencing. A message left with Fabrizio’s polling firm was not immediately returned.
The specific wording about expelling Chinese scientists, according to the book, was would you “favour or oppose requiring all Chinese scientists, researchers, and technicians that are Chinese citizens to leave the US”.