{"id":13373,"date":"2023-08-08T15:44:25","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T15:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13373"},"modified":"2023-08-10T19:22:43","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:22:43","slug":"in-new-mexico-trump-tries-to-explain-what-he-thinks-the-hispanics-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13373","title":{"rendered":"In New Mexico, Trump Tries to Explain What He Thinks \u201cthe Hispanics\u201d Want"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Amy Davidson Sorkin <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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At a campaign rally in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, on Monday night, President Donald Trump<\/a>\n had just finished a tribute to Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chair of the \nRepublican National Committee\u2014or \u201cthe woman in Michigan,\u201d as he also \nreferred to her\u2014when he turned his attention to another person in the \naudience. This was Steven Cortes, a political consultant and occasional \ncommentator on CNN, where he has been known to defend the President. \n(Trump has said that the network had fired Cortes, which does not appear\n to be the case.) Trump noted that Cortes \u201chappens\u201d to be Hispanic, and \nthen proceeded to give an indication of the peculiar lens through which \nhe himself sees the world. \u201cI\u2019ve never quite figured it out, because he \nlooks more like a Wasp than I do,\u201d Trump said. He was, at that moment, \nspeaking against a backdrop of people wearing \u201cLATINOS FOR TRUMP<\/em>\u201d\n T-shirts or waving signs bearing the same slogan; their placement, in \nview of the cameras, was an indication of the rally\u2019s message. Some of \nthem happened to resemble Cortes in ways that one imagines Trump meant; \nsome didn\u2019t, which is what one would expect, given the great diversity \nwithin the Latino community. Indeed, Trump\u2019s comment would be baffling \nif its point were not so blatant: he has a particular picture of what \n\u201cHispanics\u201d look like, and expects others to find it as perplexing as he\n does when life operates differently than the Trumpian Central Casting \noffice in his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Rio Rancho, Trump made it clear that his Latino stereotype \nextended beyond any physical features to include matters such as \ncitizenship, socioeconomics, culture, and loyalty. Still in raptures \nabout Cortes, Trump continued, \u201cThere is nobody who loves this country \nmore or Hispanic [sic] more.\u201d He looked in the direction of Cortes and \nasked, \u201cWho do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?\u201d\u2014as if this \nwere somehow a choice, as if \u201cthe Hispanics\u201d were not as built into the \ndefinition of \u201cthe country\u201d as any other Americans, and as if asking in \nthat manner were not an act of ragged division. Trump reported back to \nthe crowd, \u201cHe says the country! I don\u2019t know, I may have to go for the \nHispanics, to be honest. We\u2019ve got a lot of Hispanics! We love our \nHispanics! Get out and vote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, it is hard, with Trump, to figure out the border between \n\u201cI,\u201d \u201cwe,\u201d or whatever pronoun he\u2019s using to refer to himself, his \nparty, or the American people as a whole. (Or to somebody else: at \nanother moment in the speech, he oscillated between complaining about \nwhat he saw as the unjust persecution of the Supreme Court Justice Brett\n Kavanaugh and the unjust investigation into Russian interference in the\n 2016 election, crying out, \u201cand they still want him impeached!\u201d) The \nUnited States has \u201cgot a lot of Hispanics\u201d\u2014was that the point, or was he\n speaking in a proprietary way about the people he believed would vote \nfor him? And one can only wonder what he was thinking when he said that \nhe\u2019d \u201cgo for the Hispanics\u201d\u2014did he imagine that people would be \nflattered?\u2014or whether he had thought about it at all. Perhaps the point \nwas just to present a tableau in which he had the country and its people\n laid out like candies for him to choose among, or lined up as \ncontestants vying for his favor. Trump seemed, as always, to forget that\n in an electoral democracy he is the one who needs to ask to be chosen. \nHe speaks as if going to the polls is, above all, a great way for people\n to earn his love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump was not wrong in boasting, as he did elsewhere in the speech, \nthat he has a real shot with many Latino and Latina voters, particularly\n Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American voters\u2014though, of course, he \nexaggerated, saying, \u201cAll for Trump!\u201d Jonathan Blitzer has an incisive \nexamination of why Trump has a chance with many of these voters<\/a>\n in this week\u2019s magazine. As he notes, Democrats, in their own way, may \nnot fully recognize the politically diverse nature of the Latino \ncommunity, as focussed as some are on the Administration\u2019s often \nreprehensible behavior at the Mexican border. But Trump, as he does, \nflattened away all nuance, claiming that he was on the verge of total \nvictory with these voters next year. (His approval rating among Latinos \nnationwide is in the twenties.) As he presented the case, even if \u201cthe \nHispanics\u201d don\u2019t vote for him because of his policies toward Cuba and \nVenezuela, they should vote for him because unemployment is low and \nbecause of what he brazenly claimed was their overwhelming support for \nhis border policies. \u201cBecause the Hispanic Americans, they understand, \nthey don\u2019t want the criminals coming over the border,\u201d he said. \u201cThey \ndon\u2019t want people taking their jobs, they want to have that security, \nand they want the wall. They want<\/em> the wall!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s basis for this supposed insight was another set of \nstereotypes: that \u201cthe Hispanics\u201d are naturally more intimately familiar\n with the dangers that Trump associates with immigration\u2014drug \ntrafficking, human trafficking, and crime\u2014than other Americans are. \nRegarding illegal drugs, for example, he said, \u201cYou understand it when \nother people don\u2019t understand it.\u201d (He has a parallel gambit with \nAfrican-Americans, whose vote he routinely demands by asking, \u201cWhat the \nhell do you have to lose?\u201d as if it would surprise him that they had \nanything worth cherishing.) He added, \u201cThis is like a warlike \nsituation\u2014that\u2019s why you\u2019re liking Trump.\u201d The idea that anyone\u2019s life \nmight evince more complexity, or that people who are struggling with \ncrime or a lack of jobs might envision a solution to those problems that\n doesn\u2019t come in the form of a wall, seemed beyond his ken. Some Latino \nvoters may indeed agree with him; but the only monolith here is the \nimaginary one that Trump wants to build at the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event was, again, ostensibly designed as a forum for Trump to appeal for Latino voters and to make a play for New Mexico, a state that Hillary Clinton won easily in 2016. But then, often enough, when Trump professes his love for members of one minority group or another, the goal seems less to win their votes than to send a message to any of his supporters who may worry that they voted for a racist. If so, the Rio Rancho rally did not offer much reassurance. The President also discussed his strategy for going after Elizabeth Warren<\/a>. It involved doing \u201cthe Pocahontas thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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