tags: , , , , , Blog

Taco Bowl Tweet Didn’t Do The Trick? New GOP Campaign Laughably Tries To Make Amends With Latinos

by Gabe Ortiz on

Share This:

It seems pretty appropriate that the RNC decided to launch a new Latino outreach campaign on National Tell A Joke Day:

The RNC on Tuesday kicked off a social media campaign with a pair of videos, the first in its series “GOP Hispanics: The week ahead.” The videos, one in Spanish and another in English, laid out the standard Republican message on terrorism and foreign policy. It also repeated the party’s regular lines of attack against President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The 44-second video wraps with RNC Director of Hispanic Communications Helen Aguirre-Ferré offering praise for Trump, the only time his name is mentioned.

“Donald Trump wants the U.S. to lead and be respected,” Aguirre-Ferré says in the English-language video. “Peace through strength. Yes, I am for Trump.”

According to the release, the new campaign will also reach out to Hispanic voters on a variety of other issues, including job creation, education, veteran support and immigration.

“As we at the RNC continue to deepen our commitment to engaging with the Hispanic community, we are expanding our efforts in social media to generate greater conversation and understanding of what the Republican Party stands for,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said.

The GOP sure has a funny way of showing that commitment to Latinos. Since Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign launch more than a year ago, the Republican Party standard-bearer’s Latino outreach has consisted of:

  • Calling Mexican immigrants rapists, criminals and drug-dealers — and then refusing to walk those remarks back or apologize for them. He later called Mexicans and other immigrants “killers”
  • Calling the two supporters who brutally beat and urinated on a homeless Latino man in Boston “passionate”
  • Calling for the mass deportation of 11 million immigrants by a “deportation force” over the first 18-24 months of his presidency
  • Looking to revoke birthright citizenship of 4.5 American children born of immigrant parents in the United States and calls them “anchor babies”

Then there’s his Republican convention address, where Trump – with Reince and the entire RNC applauding him on – depicting America as under siege by “illegal immigrants”. But don’t expect Aguirre-Ferré to talk about any of those points in Spanish in her next video.

Recent polling has Donald Trump on track for a historically-low performance among Latino voters, losing the growing demographic to his rival Hillary Clinton by 58 points.

In the all-important state of Florida, Trump is polling at an abysmal 13% among Latinos, a dismal number considering Latinos make up nearly two million of Florida’s voters.

Additionally, more than 3-of-4 Latino voters (77%) say the Republican Party “doesn’t care too much about Latinos” (41%) or that the GOP is “sometimes hostile towards Latinos” (36%).

And earlier today, over 100 influential Latino Republicans published an open letter condemning Donald Trump’s campaign, with lifelong Republican Rosario Marín, 41st Treasurer under President George W. Bush, also penning a powerful op-ed endorsing Hillary Clinton over Trump:

“The party left me and my community all alone again. It has had plenty of time to stand up for my community, but it has chosen not to do so. I have come to the devastatingly painful realization that my party right now doesn’t want my vote nor that of my community.”

Let the RNC, Reince, and Aguirre-Ferré keep pumping out videos in Spanish, but they shouldn’t expect those videos to erase a year of bigoted rhetoric, Trump-endorsed assaults against Latinos and immigrants, and some of the worst Hispandering we’ve ever seen.