What Trump vs. Ramos really means for Trump’s campaign and for America

On Tuesday, Mexican-American journalist and author, Jorge Ramos, was escorted out of Donald Trump’s press meeting in Dubuque, IA, after he attempted to ask the presidential candidate questions about his radical stance on immigration. Here’s why this incident actually really, really matters for Trump and for our country’s future:

Ramos is Latino Royalty

Think Brian Williams at his peak. Or Megyn Kelly… times 10. Trump criticized Kelly, who moderated the 1st GOP debate earlier this month, for asking him unfair questions, alluding to her menstruation and later calling her a “bimbo”. Critics immediately jumped on Trump, saying he was crazy for going after the crowned jewel of FOX News and predicting that his numbers would suffer as a result of these attacks. Post-debate polls proved otherwise. But if one thing is certain it’s this: the last thing Trump’s already dismal Hispanic approval rating needs is what happened tonight.

A Gallup poll released Monday shows that out of all the GOP candidates, Trump has the highest unfavorable rating among U.S. Hispanics by far at 51%. What he did to Jorge Ramos today can only worsen these statistics for Trump. Why? Because with a legacy of 30 years under his belt, Ramos is the most respected and watched Spanish-language newscaster in the United States. In 2005 Time Magazine named Emmy winning journalist “One of The 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America” and just this year included him among their list of 100 of The Most Influential People as “America’s News Anchor”. In 2010, respondents to a Pew Hispanic Center survey said Ramos was one of the four most important Latino leaders in the country. Most notably, Ramos’ network, Univision, has long been the No. 1 network among Hispanics in the United States. Last year Univision was the #1 network in primetime ratings for a second July sweep (2013-2014), ranking ahead of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, according to Nielsen. When anchored by Jorge Ramos in 2013, Noticiero Univision attracted an average of 2 million viewers nightly competing with The Kelly File’s average of 2.233 million viewers in October of the same year.

“Go Back to Univision” = “Go Back to Mexico”

At one point in the back and forth, Trump dismisses Ramos saying, “Go back to Univision.” Now, Trump has had feuds and boisterous exchanges with countless journalists. In an interview with NBC’s Katie Tur, he called her “a very naive person” and told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. After Univision dropped the broadcast of the Miss USA pageant in June to protest Trump’s offensive remarks on Mexicans, Donald sued the network for $500 million. When NBC cut ties with Trump in June over the same comments, Trump called the network “weak and foolish”.

But this interaction with Jorge Ramos is different, and here’s why: Jorge Ramos was the first and only journalist to be physically removed from a press conference since the beginning of Trump’s campaign. In all of the encounters that Trump has had with the media since he announced his candidacy for president in mid-June, this was the first time that Trump’s insults crossed the line from being purely verbal to physical as well. By allowing Ramos to be ejected from the room for merely asking questions without being called on — which by the way, happens all the time in media avails like this one— Trump crossed that line. And what’s more, he crossed it with an idol and leader among the Latino community — a community that he has consistently bashed and insulted throughout his run. Not once when calling out or insulting any other journalist did he tell them to “go back to” their respective network. It is impossible to separate the words “Go Back to Univision” from Trump’s persistent rhetoric on the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. It is impossible to pretend that the statement “Go back to Univision” isn’t related to his rejection of Latino bodies in this country, especially given Univision’s role as the voice of Hispanics in American media.

Freedom of the Press?

Trump says that he said what he said to Ramos because he was speaking out of turn. But if you watch the sequence of events at the press conference, it is clear that Trump didn’t start calling on the other reporter until well AFTER Ramos started speaking. So Trump’s claim that Ramos just “stood up and started ranting and raving” and that he had already called on another reporter is simply untrue and was just a pretext. He simply didn’t want to answer Ramos’ questions. After Ramos was allowed back into the room and asked his question, Trump again…didn’t answer. Instead, as soon as Ramos mentioned the Univision poll of Latinos Trump interrupted him to say that the he had sued Univision for $500M, that Ramos is “part of the suit,” and that Univision is “very worried about it.” Trump then added that he is “very good at these things,” presumably referring to litigation.

Now, some have argued that what happened last night was a violation of Ramos’ right to report, a constitutional right guaranteed by the first amendment. The argument is that if you are not allowed to be in the room your right to report has been eliminated. But it is not a clean story in this case. The person giving the interview, Trump in this case, can set rules for how many questions will be taken given time constraints, decide the order in which they will be taken, and of course decide how he/she wants to answer them. While it is not uncommon for reporters to ask questions out of turn, the person giving the interview does not have to answer them. If there had been 1,000 reporters in the room and the interview only lasted 20 minutes, it’s very likely that the majority of the reporters wouldn’t have had the chance to ask their questions. So, reasonable minds may differ on whether what went down last night is a violation of the right to report per se. And if a reporter is being disruptive, heckling, yelling or throwing things, it is not inappropriate to have the reporter (or any other person doing these things) removed from the room (although Ramos was not even close to fitting this criteria).

But that is beside the point because the key here is what Trump said to Ramos before and after he was thrown out of the room.

This interaction points to a larger, disturbing pattern in Trump’s engagement with the media. It is a pattern that goes beyond his “go back to Univision” remark and its xenophobic implications and beyond his sexist attacks on Megyn Kelly after the GOP debate. What we are seeing here is who Trump really is and how he deals with people who disagree with him. It gives us a glimpse of the kind of “shoot the messenger” president he would be. Throughout his love-hate summer relationship with the press, he has consistently nullified the media by disqualifying journalists, attacking them, or in this case choosing to ignore them and remove them physically from a room. This is the kind of thing one would expect from say, Vladimir Putin… not from a leading GOP candidate in the United States.

Trump’s Justification of Racist Rhetoric Only Perpetuates Stereotypes

Donald Trump has ensured journalists and voters time and time again that despite his radical views on immigration and offensive comments regarding illegal immigrants, he will win the hispanic vote. Trump claims that he has a great relationship with Mexico, Mexicans love him and he will win the Hispanic vote. His most common explanation as to how that’s possible given his pitiful ratings among hispanic voters? The fact that he employs “thousands and thousands” of them in his multi-billion dollar luxury hotel and real-estate monopolies. In arguing that Latinos love him because he gives them jobs, Trump has failed to specify is what sorts of jobs they possess. How many of them hold executive positions in his companies? How does that compare to national demographics? Trump doesn’t realize that by emphasizing the fact that he employs thousands of hispanics as under-paid service sector and construction workers, he is perpetuating a stereotype that needs to be broken by our next president. This country needs a president who envisions more than minimum wage jobs for Latinos, who invests in education and opportunities for minority students in low income neighborhoods and who encourages advancement and instills hope in the nation’s Latino population. Instead, Trump perpetuates the stereotypes of Latinos as criminals and limits their potential by only referring to them positively as low-level employers.

People Are Actually Listening

Two favorability polls released Tuesday in New Hampshire and South Carolina found Trump with favorability percentages in the high 50s… which only adds to his streak of continuously high poll numbers this summer. In CNN’s most recent national GOP poll, Donald Trump leads the pack of 17 hopefuls with 24%, Jeb Bush falling in second place with 13%. Nothing, not his attacks on Latinos, on women, or on war veterans can seem to break this lead.

The point is: anyone who still thinks that there’s no way Donald Trump can win the Republican Primary is simply wrong. People are showing up to his rallies, participating in these polls, and most importantly (disturbingly?), they’re listening.

A Trump voter told GQ early this month that their favorite thing Trump has said is “You’re Fired”. He was then asked who Trump should fire besides Obama, to which he responded, “Let’s see: John Kerry, our last governor, the attorney general, every Muslim that they put in…” According to a New York Times article, last week a supporter at Trump’s campaign rally in Alabama said this about Trump’s upcoming rally speech: “Hopefully, he’s going to sit there and say, ‘When I become elected president, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make the border a vacation spot, it’s going to cost you $25 for a permit, and then you get $50 for every confirmed kill. That’d be one nice thing.”

Sure, these are only two of Trump’s presumably thousands of supporters. And SURE, Trump can’t be blamed for all of the crazies that he attracts… or can he? I believe that he can.

While Trump’s intention may not be to add fuel to the racist fire that exists in America, his rhetoric is doing just that. His very lack of “political correctness” which him popular among voters who are frustrated with Washington robot politicians incites very passionate and at times violent anti-Hispanic and anti-minority sentiments among voters. By speaking the way that he does about minorities he is condoning racism and completely disregarding the effects that his words have on the treatment and safety of over 50 million Hispanics in the United States. The fact that in the year 2015, an educated American would use such a huge, influential platform to unapologetically legitimize racist discourse that is so detrimental to our nation’s most vulnerable is despicable.