Never one to say die, Donald Trump was out on the campaign trail, presiding over a rally in New Mexico, in a bid to win over a state he lost by 8 points to Hillary Clinton in 2016 while also making an appeal to “the Hispanics.”
“We love our Hispanics,” Trump crowed in that way he has of “othering” brown and black folks while supposedly being complimentary.
Oh yes, Latinx people are definitely backing Trump — despite polls showing, according to the New York Times, that his approval rating among them stands at only 25 percent — because, he said, “the Hispanic Americans, they understand” all about drugs and crime.
Stated Trump, per NBC News:
“And at the center of America’s drug crisis, this is where the Hispanics know it better than anybody, people said, ‘Oh, the Hispanics won’t like a wall.’ I said, ‘I think they are going to love it,’” Trump said. “You know why? Because you understand it better than other people, but at the whole center of this crisis is the drugs that are pouring in, and you understand that when other people don’t understand it.”
“The Hispanic Americans, they understand,” he offered, according to the Times. “They don’t want criminals coming across the border. They don’t want people taking their jobs. They want to have that security. And they want the wall. They want the wall.”
Trump also took the time to display his ignorance awe concerning the diversity of race and racial expression among Latinx people.
In an exchange from the raised podium at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, N.M., Trump acknowledged supporter and CNN contributor Steve Cortes in the crowd; wondering aloud how Cortes could be Hispanic when he appeared to be more white Anglo-Saxon Protestant than Trump himself.
“He happens to be Hispanic, but I never quite figured it out because he looks more like a WASP than I do,” Trump said, according to NBC News.
This was followed by more othering of Latinx folks, as NBC explains:
From the stage, [Trump] asked Cortes: “Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?” Cortes appeared to mouth “country,” to which Trump replied: “I don’t know. I may have to go for the Hispanics, to be honest with you. We got a lot of Hispanics.”
“Nobody loves the Hispanics more,” Trump concluded in his “plan B” bid to shore up his re-election hopes for 2020 by perhaps being able to pick up a win in New Mexico, the state with the largest Latinx population in the nation. “We love our Hispanics, get out and vote.”