US President Donald Trump
The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, born in South Carolina to Sikh immigrants from Punjab, was told by conservative commentator Ann Coulter during Haley’s 2023 presidential campaign to “go back to your own country. Even Trump repeatedly mocked Haley’s birth name, Nimarata, during the 2024 Republican primary campaign. Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, was targeted by white-nationalist Nick Fuentes and others after Vance became Trump’s running mate in 2024.
Washington lawmaker Pramila Jayapal, who has heard the “go back to India” call from MAGA extremists for years, has faced death threats, including reporting a man carrying a loaded Glock outside her Seattle home. Asked last week to “take your curry and go home” by a MAGA Republican, Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi clapped back: “I’m staying. His Republican primary opponent Casey Putsch has attacked him as an “Indian boy” who was merely “cosplaying an American,” invoked “blood and soil” language and questioned whether Ramaswamy was genuinely American. Ramaswamy has responded by attacking the increasingly popular notion among MAGA that “heritage Americans” have some superior claim to the country. He has also said his social-media feeds became so saturated with slurs and demands that he return to India that he quit posting personally on X and Instagram. Fuentes attacked the couple’s interracial marriage and invoked “replacement” rhetoric over Usha’s Indian ancestry. Vance later responded to continuing attacks on his wife by saying critics could “eat s—. ”
Trump’s Chandigarh-born legal luminary Harmeet Dhillon’s effort to portray herself as all-American by posting a photo of a beef dinner has invited ridicule from MAGA trolls, as has conservative Dinesh D’Souza’s attempt to defend his daughter from racist attacks by telling MAGA exclusionists that her mother is white. Ohio-governor aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy and Trump’s former UN envoy Nikki Haley, at various points, found themselves having to demonstrate that they are American enough. Democrats and liberals have of course experienced this to an even greater degree. Some have responded cheekily. Vivek Ramaswamy has had the longest-running version of this particular identity seminar. The Ohio Republican, self-professed Hindu son of Indian immigrants and former presidential candidate, built much of his political career attacking what he regarded as left-wing racial grievance politics. Now, running for governor of Ohio, he has encountered racial hostility from the right. The irony is rich: Ramaswamy once argued that race should not determine American identity. He is now explaining that principle to people who apparently believe ancestry should. Coulter coupled the remark with references to India’s supposed cow and rat worship. And then there is the curious case of the man married to an Indian-American woman.
Nikki Haley encountered an earlier version of the same contradiction.