“Are You Ready?” Trump Begins Courting Latinos With Lies And Absurd Antics

In a matter of days, President Donald Trump gave his first interview ever for a Spanish-speaking network, kicked off his campaign in Orlando, Florida and will launch “Latinos for Trump”. This marks a series of steps towards wooing the Latino vote for the 2020 election. The Latino electorate could be of crucial importance in order to get Trump reelected, as they are expected to surpass African-Americans as the largest minority in the electorate with 13.3% of the vote. The problem? Trump seeks to somehow make Latinos disregard the fact that he is rabid racist and the fact that he is seeking to purge the United States from Latino immigrants.

He will probably prove successful with the Venezuelan and Cuban diaspora, which is why he chose Florida to launch his campaign, a swing state that could make or brake any election and one with a significant Latino population. As part of an effort to win this demographic over, there are plans to launch a platform called “Latinos for Trump”, and the president appears to have Vice president Pence fly to Miami for the event.

@realdonaldtrumpTrump signals to have understood this is the time to reverse his low numbers among Latinos. Though he claims to have a 50% preference among Latino voters, it’s probably closer to 29%, which is the number of Latino popular votes he received in 2019. Yet, he told José Díaz-Balart he had the polls to prove them on an interview that Telemundo released Thursday night, the first interview Trump has made for a Spanish-speaking network.

@jdiaz-balartDíaz-Balart pressed him on a number of other issues, his recent deal with Mexico to avoid tariffs, his support within the Latino community, and his “zero tolerance” policy against immigration. Yet Trump took advantage of this platform in order to spread misinformation, half truths and outrageous lies.

Díaz-Balart pressed Trump on his deeply unpopular decision to detain migrants who crosses the border, many of which were seeking asylum or coming in with children, effectively splitting up families. Trump’s response: Obama did it. “I inherited separation and I changed the plan and I brought people together,” Trump said.

He did not. This is one of Trump’s favorite false claims as he constantly says it every time he’s questioned on it. The Obama Administration actually rejected a family separation plan. It was only the Trump Administration that carried out the plan beginning in 2017 but going into full practice in 2018. After nationwide outrage, Trump ended this particular policy. In other words he (half-way) solved a problem he created himself.

During the interview, president Trump would repeat “are you ready?” to Díaz-Balart before answering a question, as if he was about to drop some major game-changer. “Ready?” If Trump is this eager to win the Latino vote in spite of doing everything to rid the United States of Latinos, he must understand the importance of this demographic. The silver lining of all this is that if Latinos are instrumental to get him re-elected, then they’ll also be capable of delivering a good enough blow to make him a first termer. Here’s to hoping.

@realdonaldtrumpRead more:
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