PALM BEACH, Fla.—A group of Vietnamese Americans who fled communism lauded President-elect Donald Trump’s Election Day victory as a win for their pro-America, anti-communist efforts.
“I feel safe. I feel happy. ... It’s my dream, and it’s fulfilled, after four years of working for this,” said Lapson Luu, founder of Vietnamese Americans for America First, which held a Victory Night party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Nov. 6.
Luu granted The Epoch Times exclusive access to the celebration, which about 150 people attended a day after Trump’s landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Luu’s group, known as VAFAF, has grown to 500 members and gained attention from many, including Trump. Not only do ladies from the group show up en masse in eye-catching red gowns, but also, the group raised money and used social media and in-person networks to boost Trump’s campaign. In addition, the group has repeatedly gathered at Trump properties.
The former president has met with Luu about a half-dozen times, she said, emphasizing how much respect he has shown her. Luu, who is petite at 4 feet, 11 inches, said the 6-foot-3 president-elect leans downward so he can speak with her at eye level.
“He wants to know how his policy helped you,” she said.
Luu rejects mainstream media characterizations of Trump as “racist.”
“I’m a minority. If he’s a racist, he won’t talk to me. But every time he sees me, every time he sees me and my two other friends, he always says, ‘These are the good people, the Vietnamese,’” she said.
Holly Ngo of Fountain Valley, California, who left Vietnam and became a U.S. citizen more than 30 years ago, said, “What we are seeing right now is exactly what I saw then,” under the Vietnamese communist regime.
“So, for example, you know, you don’t have free speech. ... Censorship was terrible. That’s exactly how communists did it to their citizens,” she told The Epoch Times.
“It scares me. We left the country because of that; we don’t want to see the history repeated. It’s really threatening. And once they can control you, they control you all the way around.”
Another VAFAF member who became a citizen decades ago, Hung Nguyen, said he sees communism taking hold “step by step,” adding that media are used to spread propaganda and children are indoctrinated with anti-American principles in school. His wife, Betty Nguyen, said: “I love Trump because Trump loves America. ... He protects the U.S.A., protects our border.”
All three said Trump’s win left them feeling confident he would keep his promises, including reversing the trend toward socialism and communism.
Luu said that if the election had a different outcome, the Victory Party would have changed markedly. Nevertheless, Luu planned it five months in advance based on her belief that Trump would prevail. Even if he hadn’t, “we would still want to celebrate our journey,” she said.
It began on the night of Nov. 3, 2020. Luu and millions of Americans were watching election results on TV.
“I guess you all remember, right?” she told her audience at the dinner, recounting how she was holding a bottle of Trump-branded wine, ready to pop it open and enjoy a celebratory drink “because the map was all red,” signifying the many states where the Republican presidential candidate, Trump, had secured more votes than his Democratic opponent, then-candidate Joe Biden.
But Luu said she fell asleep when several states suspended vote counting.
In the middle of the night, Luu awakened. She thought she was dreaming when she saw “the map was fading; the red color was fading.”
Over the next few days, Democrat blue began to replace red on the map, and Biden was declared the winner.
Luu said she burst into tears and that she felt “sad and depressed for months.”
But she realized that “being sad would not help; being depressed would never be a solution,” she said.
So Luu took action. She did everything she could to support Trump, she said, including using social media to combat what she considered misinformation and promote his policies; she formed VAFAF.
On the night of Nov. 5, Luu burst into tears again after seeing Trump declared the president-elect.
“Same tears, but different meaning: tears of happiness, tears of victory, and tears of joy,” she said.
She said people cast “votes of love” for Trump.
Based on the latest figures available early on Nov. 7, Trump had garnered 72.6 million votes and 295 Electoral College votes, far outpacing Harris’s tallies.
“With love, we have beliefs. With beliefs, we have strength,” Luu told the Mar-a-Lago Grand Ballroom audience, who cheered hearing her remarks. “We pray we will overcome our difficulties. ... We will achieve victory. The victory we have right now is the victory of love—the love of this country!
“We should not vote for someone because we hate the opposite side. This country is so grateful to have the love of President Donald J. Trump and, you know that President Trump is so grateful to have the love of God.”
