Elaine Chao to Protesters: Leave My Demon Husband Alone!

Videos posted to Twitter show Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao heatedly defending her trash husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to a crowd of protesters at Georgetown University on Monday night.

In the videos, which were posted by people identifying themselves as Georgetown students in their Twitter bios, Chao and McConnell are seen leaving a building when protesters walk up to their car. McConnell immediately scurries into the vehicle, while Chao walks around the back to confront the crowd.

The protesters start playing the wrenching audio obtained by ProPublica of children who’ve been separated at the border crying for their parents and ask: “Why are you separating families?”

“Why don’t you leave my husband alone!” Chao replies. The exchange gets heated, with Chao snapping “he is not,” at a protester; near the end of the video someone shouts, “How do you sleep at night?” as Chao gets into the car.

This is the bare minimum that public officials like Chao and McConnell, who have worked to enable and enact Donald Trump’s racist agenda, deserve. Chao has stood by her men—“both of them”—as Trump calls white supremacists “very fine people” and McConnell takes a smug victory lap to celebrate his role in engineering the Supreme Court’s horrific decision to uphold Trump’s racist Muslim travel ban. This family should not get to walk around the streets in peace.

I have reached out to Secretary Chao’s office and Georgetown University for comment and will update if I hear back.