Rain fell on a Monday earlier this month as Matthew Truong, 53, climbed onto a stool in front of a yellow pickup truck. Truong addressed some 200 supporters of President Trump, many of them huddled under umbrellas and wearing red ball caps, face masks printed with portraits of Trump, and scarves knit with the American flag.

“I know it is a beautiful day,” Truong quipped, to laughter. “You know why it’s a beautiful day? Because we still live in a free country.”

This was Truong’s sixth time leading a Trump rally this season at the Eden Center, a Falls Church strip mall of 120 businesses, nearly all Vietnamese. He’s also registered voters at the center, a task made easier when the Republican Party of Virginia rented an office there for the first time.

Like many in his audience, Truong was born in Vietnam. He fled Saigon without his parents in 1980 and forged a career as an IT director in Great Falls. Truong, who ran in a primary for Congress this year, says a speech by President Barack Obama pushed him into activism. The former president praised the government’s role in helping Americans succeed, saying, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

“It triggered something that I heard in Vietnam, where the government knows everything,” Truong said. “Whereas for us, as free enterprise, I pay for the roads and bridges, because I work. I pay taxes on that.”

Vietnamese Americans like Truong are the most consistent Republican voters of all Asian American groups. However, a rising interest in Vice President Joe Biden has shattered consensus among the 53,000-person community in Virginia.

Alan Frank, senior vice president of Capital Commercial Properties, which owns the Eden Center, says that when he gave Democrats permission for a Saturday afternoon demonstration, Republicans asked to hold a rally at the same time and same place. Frank asked and they agreed to use a different corner of the center, he said. Still, he called the Falls Church Police Department as a precaution.

“I said, ‘Could you just drive by in a cruiser, just to have a presence?’ We’ve had too many things happen,” Frank said.

The rally for Biden last weekend began with drummers playing while a dragon danced. Democratic Del. Kathy Tran took the mic. Tran, 42, is the first Vietnamese American to serve in Virginia’s General Assembly, representing Fairfax County, a seat she won in 2017. She told the crowd she arrived with her parents as refugees from Vietnam.

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris understand what it’s like when you have to start anew,” said Tran.

“Are you ready to elect him?” she asked, referring to Biden.

“Yeah!” the crowd roared back.

Behind her, at the entrance of a coffee shop with a Trump sign hanging on its glass door, 49-year-old construction foreman Philip Tran fumed — and heckled.

“They betrayed the whole Vietnamese community,” he said, looking at the Biden supporters. “Without the Republicans, we’re not going to survive in America.”

Like Cubans in Florida, Vietnamese Americans share a history of fleeing communism, according to researcher Mai Nguyen Do at AAPI Data, a project run out of the University of California, Riverside School of Public Policy. They revere the same yellow flag with three red stripes, representing South Vietnam when it fell in 1975. However, the two political camps place different priorities on that common background, Do says.

“Older Vietnamese Republicans might say, ‘Well, we like Trump because he’s anti-China,” she said. “That’s maybe not a point that resonates as strongly with younger voters, who might be more interested in things like housing policy or more healthcare or the environment.”

Do said younger Vietnamese Americans find each other in places like the Asian Americans with Republican Parents Support Group on Facebook. Biden’s campaign has also reached out, publishing a letter in the national Vietbao Daily News.

As Vietnamese Democrats grow more assertive, the older Republican faction digs in.

In Falls Church last weekend, the Democrats began a procession, shouting “Let’s Go Joe” to the rhythm of beating drums. They passed a nail salon and a restaurant, but then Republicans intercepted them, shouting “Donald Trump!” The police Frank had called wedged themselves between the two groups. Biden supporter Mai Pham got in a standoff with Philip Tran, the Republican foreman, and she said he put his finger in her face.

Pham, 34, said she served in the U.S. Navy after immigrating 12 years ago. She said she was turned off by reports that Trump called veterans suckers and losers — reports the White House has denied. She wrote “Sucker and Loser Voting for Biden” on her sign.

“I’m not angry. I’m just very sad,” Pham said. “Because I used to stand with them, protesting the Vietnamese Communist government and now we part away.”

Falls Church Interim Sheriff Matt Cay said there were no arrests or injuries.

Quang Le watched the two groups scuffle from inside his Huong Binh Bakery and Deli.

“I get this feeling like the Jets and the Sharks,” said Le, 48, referencing the opposing gangs of “West Side Story.”

He said the fights were disturbing, but politics is good for business. Activists snapped up his portable, inexpensive bánh mì sandwiches, helping him bounce back from a rut early in the pandemic.

Le said he felt his own political compass tilting this year. When he voted early, he followed the example of Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

“I have put Ronald Reagan, and I’ve convinced my mother-in-law, who loves Ronald Reagan, and decided she can’t vote for Trump,” Le said.

Le said if thousands of moderate Republicans join him and write in the 40th president, it could be a signal to the party to repudiate Trump and chart a new course.