After claiming fluency, Tran flubbed several interviews in Vietnamese.
Derek Tran has joined the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and other politicians who have been caught in lies surrounding their backgrounds.
After making bold claims to be fluent in Vietnamese, Tran was forced to back-peddle and say that he was once fluent, but has lost his childhood proficiency.
The corrections to his record come after Tran fumbled an interview with California-based Saigon Entertainment Television, a Vietnamese-language TV station. Tran, who claimed to be planning to campaign door-to-door in older Vietnamese neighborhoods, had trouble answering questions when asked in Vietnamese and requested the help of a translator throughout the interview.
Tran used the same translator for interviews on Little Saigon TV and during campaign events and used prepared notes to make it through a speech in Vietnamese.
Both Tran and the DCCC have touted Tran as a native Vietnamese speaker.
President Donald Trump enjoys generous support from Vietnamese communities and Tran is viewed by Democrat leadership as an opportunity to undermine that support.
Democrat Derek Tran is challenging Republican Michelle Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District, a race considered to be one of the most watched in the country. Steel is also of Asian descent and has used her family’s escape from Communist North Korea as a major pillar of her campaign.
40% of residents of CA-45 are Asian Americans and Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in the district following English and Spanish.
