It’s been almost two months since Donald “The Hispanics Love Me” Trump infamously deported journalist and Mexican immigrant Jorge Ramos from an Iowa press conference (with Ramos facing even more attacks from a Trump supporter once outside, too).
Now, in a return campaign visit to the state yesterday, the leading Republican candidate for President wasted absolutely zero time in getting back to his favorite pastime of immigrant-bashing — and, yet again at the expense of Mexicans.
From the Washington Post:
As he does in nearly every speech, Trump criticized Ford Motor Company for its plan to spend $2.5 billion on a new plant in Mexico and detailed how he would bully Ford into building that plant in the United States instead.
Trump said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, “is not going to have a clue” as to how to do this and would likely fold under pressure from Ford’s lobbyists.
And then Trump kept going: “I mean, the way our country is run, if it doesn’t happen to be me that wins, you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to build a plant and illegals are going drive those cars right over the border.”
Trump’s nasty bashing is bad enough already. But, then the Post treats his subsequent anti-immigrant remarks to his adoring fans as casually as a review for a comedy act:
As the crowd laughed and cheered, Trump one-upped himself yet again, taking one more jab at illegal immigrants: “And they’ll probably end up stealing the cars.”
Yeah, he “one-upped himself” there, Washington Post.
First, Trump calls immigrants criminals and “rapists,” then they face an inundation of physical and verbal attacks at the hands of Trump supporters, and now they’re going to steal your cars, too. I’m sure Latinos and immigrants agree that this is absolutely hilarious, WaPo.
This blatant racism, which is tolerated by the media, is exactly why so many Latino and immigrant groups, organizers, and leaders are furious that NBC executives have invited Trump back to their network to host an episode of Saturday Night Live next month, after supposedly cutting ties with him back in June for his “rapist” comments.
Already, hundreds of thousands of advocates have partnered together to demand SNL producer Lorne Michaels and NBC executives dump Trump from his hosting duties (check out the new #RacismIsntFunny website here), with one MoveOn petition — launched by AV’s Juan Escalante — garnering nearly 140,000 signatures alone.
As Rep. Luis Gutierrez noted on the House floor yesterday:
“To put Donald Trump on the air in American living rooms on the signature comedy show of one of the most important national networks – after saying that Mexicans are rapists, drug-dealers and criminals – that is a corporate blunder too big to be ignored.”
Imagine if Trump had been talking about Jewish-Americans or African-Americans during his speech instead? There certainly wouldn’t be any talk of Trump “one-upping” himself like he was letting loose a string of innocent knock-knock jokes.
There’s nothing funny about the mainstreaming of racist comments about Latinos and immigrants. We know what SNL’s thinking is — getting a ratings boost, pure and simple — in other words, NBC is letting racism drive ratings. But the Washington Post should know better.
