"The adversarial relationship between Mr. Trump and the Spanish-language news media, which has simmered publicly since he announced his candidacy in June, boiled over on Tuesday at a news conference in Dubuque, Iowa, when the candidate erupted at Jorge Ramos, the main news anchor at Univision and Fusion, when he tried to ask a question without being called on. Mr. Trump signaled to one of his security guards, who physically removed Mr. Ramos from the event.
“Don’t touch me, sir. Don’t touch me,” Mr. Ramos said, as he was marched out of the room. “I have the right to ask a question.”
Mr. Ramos was eventually allowed to return. But for the Spanish-language press, which has grown in size and influence in politics, the tense exchange was a highly public flexing of muscle against a candidate who many outlets no longer pretend to cover objectively: They are offended by Mr. Trump’s words and tactics — and they are showing it." NY Times
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I watched the Trump-Ramos imbroglio this morning and I would agree with the Morning Joe crew and Donald Trump that Ramos was WAY, WAY out of line.
Ramos who has fixed and parochial views on all things related to Latinos in the US, traveled to Iowa and attended, uninvited, a Donald Trump presser in a Trump hired hotel meeting room where he stood up while Trump was answering another reporter's question and began to harangue Trump on Ramos' favorite agenda:
- You cannot build a sufficient border barrier.
- You cannot deport 11 million illegal immigrants.
- You cannot stop "birthright citizenship."
- You cannot change the constitution.
- I am a reporter. I have a right to question you.
- I am an immigrant and a citizen and you must listen to me.
None of this was expressed as question. It was all accusatory diatribe. Well, pilgrims, Ramos does not have a RIGHT to ask anything of Trump or anyone else and to demand a response. He was at a private meeting, paid for by Trump. Trump is under no obligation at all to accept this kind of ethno-centric harangue from someone who, IMO, has no respect at all for the American political process or American law if it is inconvenient to his ethnic brethren. He behaved in much the same way toward President Obama, calling him "deporter in chief."
Ramos may be a citizen of the United States but, like a lot of non-Latino media people he needs to learn how to behave himself in the context of AMERICAN society and to accept the idea that journalists DO NOT determine our political future.
What Ramos has done is win more votes for Trump. pl
Sir
You are correct. The concerted attacks on Trump by both the left wing and right wing media using political correctness yardstick is leading to more support from whites. Several Democrats I know will vote for Trump over Hillary if the election were held now. I speculate that he could run a very credible campaign garnering support from both sides of our duopoly. The Democrat media is rather smug that Trump will destroy the Republicans but they may be surprised at the extent of support he could have among their registered voters.
Posted by: Jack | 26 August 2015 at 10:55 AM
Spot on, Pat. He's not a journalist IMO, other than by self-proclaimed title. He heckled Trump and got what he asked for (unfortunately). He can now beat his chest and, perhaps teary eyed, declare to his followers "See how I was wronged on your behalf!"
Posted by: BabelFish | 26 August 2015 at 10:56 AM
Col: It will prove to be a teachable moment. I shook my head and told my wife, "I think Trump just got a lot more votes."
I wish my fellow Democrats would stop mocking Trump and realize that the Master Salesman from New York is connecting with lots of our fellow citizens. I won't vote for him, but I sure as hell take him seriously.
Posted by: Matthew | 26 August 2015 at 11:13 AM
Scott Adams made a similar comment about the scene:
"Now consider the visuals. Trump remained calm, put the reporter in his place, and eventually nodded to security to lead the protesting reporter out while cameras followed the entire episode...
And do you know what his core supporters saw? They saw Trump deport that Mexican reporter right out of the room, metaphorically. Those other candidates are talking about immigration but Trump has already started."
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/127604348746/trump-makes-univision-do-the-perp-walk
Posted by: Gerard | 26 August 2015 at 11:17 AM
I heartily second Gerard's link to the perp-walk post. In fact, Scott Adams has an entire series of insightful posts on Donald Trump's mastery of persuasion.
http://blog.dilbert.com/
Posted by: sfauthor | 26 August 2015 at 11:55 AM
I think you're keeping score in a clown fight. If Don Trump's candidacy represents good behavior in american society, then we've navigated from tragedy to farce and back to tragedy.
Posted by: deanosaur | 26 August 2015 at 12:01 PM
deanosaur
I deal in reality not pious hopes. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 26 August 2015 at 12:02 PM
Col,
Pardon the second intrusion, but your RSS feed remains broken, this makes it difficult for some correspondents to monitor this blog.
Posted by: AEL | 26 August 2015 at 12:23 PM
Do the bulk of the Hispanic voters in the USA actually agree with Ramos? There are great divides in the Hispanic community between Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. In addition much of the Mexican American community is split between US citizens, green carders and illegals.
Does anyone know of any reliable poll data on the political attitudes of these groups.
Posted by: r whitman | 26 August 2015 at 12:57 PM
IMO Mexican Border issues are extremely complex and immigration of Mexicans to the USA legal and illegal really only document to me that the USA and Mexico are largely one country not two.
If the border ever really sealed tight Mexican friends have long told me that the norther Mexican states may well succeed from Mexico and try to become US states. They also state that 40-50 million Mexicans during any Mexican revolution could well mass migrate to the US.
Just noting for the record that California a majority minority state now and Hispanic of all shades now the majority.
Mexico is not the biggest problem for the US right now IMO but given the age of the Castro brothers the 2016 candidates might well be asked about their Cuban policies.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 26 August 2015 at 01:31 PM
r whitman: Who knows? When I worked in South Texas, most of the border patrol agents were Hispanic. This may be an issue that resonates one way with party and press elites and quite another with everyday people.
Posted by: Matthew | 26 August 2015 at 02:38 PM
I watched the whole thing last night on CNN. It was great TV. Ramos was clearly trying to cause a scene and Trump handled the situation with aplomb. In fact, amazingly well for a candidate who supposedly doesn't have a bunch of media handlers all over him. Ironically Ramos's attempt to take down Trump probably did more to help Trump's image with primary voters than hurt it. It certainly upstaged Trump's rambling speech later that day.
Posted by: nick b | 26 August 2015 at 02:44 PM
r whitman,
"Do the bulk of the Hispanic voters in the USA actually agree with Ramos?" That's a good question. I think you should look back to the Col's original post “The coming political revolt of 2016”; to quote the relevant part: “ …. Joe Scarborough today said that "people ALL OVER THE CITY, PEOPLE WE RESPECT" have called him and Mika to chide for giving credence to the Trump phenomenon. ALL OVER THE CITY.”
The corporate media elite are running scared. So apparently is Mr. Ramos. There are close to 200,000,000 eligible voters in America, apparently they are all supposed to believe that the opinions of 11,000,000 illegals, their relatives and supporters (like Mexican Billionaire, the World’s Richest man and largest individual owner of the NY Times, Carlos Slim) matter most and they should just roll over and do what they are told. Laws, those are for those other people who want to become US citizens, not these illegal aliens. Apparently a bunch of voters are showing their displease with this party line by showing up at Trump rallies. The private polling by the media and other campaigners must be truly atrocious if they are this concerned this early in the election cycle.
Posted by: Fred | 26 August 2015 at 03:08 PM
Every commenter focuses on the initial encounter, but Ramos came back in later and they had an extended exchange where Ramos tried hard to get him to support his own positions and Trump put on such an astonishing display of deflection Ramos simply couldn't continue without being rude, an angle he clearly couldn't exploit further.
Posted by: a a | 26 August 2015 at 05:05 PM
aa
What's your point? pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 26 August 2015 at 05:13 PM
nick b: Bernie needs to take lessons from Trump on how to control his own microphone.
Posted by: Matthew | 26 August 2015 at 05:27 PM
My point is simply that I haven't seen anyone commenting on the second, much longer, and more substantive exchange that seemed to me more revealing of them both in the way it brought out everything about the way that Trump handles himself and his campaign, and Ramos couldn't get through it in the brief moment he had and that if he had more time, in a different venue, it may well have been Trump who left because you can see them wind it down at just the moment he's wrong-footed.
That's how it seemed to me.
Posted by: a a | 26 August 2015 at 05:48 PM
Well here we are: we have "American journalists" who put the interests of certain ethnics groups -- theirs -- ahead of the rest of us.
I recalled reading that as an organization Univision puts the interests of Hispanics first, ahead of America's and Americans' interests as well. Here's something from an article from last month that shows my recollection was correct:
"When the nation's largest Spanish-language television network cut ties just over a week ago with Donald Trump, Univision executives said they were acting out of "a responsibility to speak up for the community we serve.".
"We see firsthand the work ethic, love for family, strong religious values and the important role Mexican immigrants ... have in building the future of our country," the network said in response to Trump's derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants.
It was a characteristic move for Univision, which, like many Spanish-language media outlets in the U.S., defines itself not just as a media company but as an advocate and defender of the Latino community.
"They openly acknowledge their bias in acting in the interest of Hispanic America," said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster based in Florida."
How are the rest of us supposed to react to this kind of "I'm for anything and everything that benefits my ethnic group" mentality when the people who view the world this way also view any opposition from other Americans as prejudice and xenophobia? There's also a vocal minority of European Americans who are back up the claims of the various ethnic lobbies, no matter how absurd they may be.
I think there are a lot of young people who don't even realize they're allowed to say disagree with the people like Ramos or feel that there anything wrong with his perspective.
People like Ramos view America as a place that belongs to the world and Americans as people who are supposed to provide a new home to all comers, whether we like it or not. It's a ridiculous proposition but it's become far more popular and pervasive than I could have ever imagined.
Posted by: jerseycityjoan | 26 August 2015 at 07:09 PM
Matthew,
I'm not sure Sanders helps himself by being anything different than who he is, and I know for sure there can only be one Trump.
Down the road, students of politics will have to look back and study how Trump managed the media so effectively to his benefit. He's managed to knock every other candidate off the screen like no one I've ever seen before. If he can keep up the momentum, who knows how far he can take his candidacy?
Posted by: nick b | 26 August 2015 at 08:01 PM
That's funny a a, cause it looked to me like Ramos got WREKT by Trump.
Ramos, a MexIcan that doesn't believe in waiting in lines. Shocking.
Posted by: Tyler | 26 August 2015 at 09:54 PM
As my earlier reply doesn't seem to have made it through the intertubes, I'll try again.
Trump letting Ramos back in takes the edge off the critique if his summary rudeness in ejecting him, though in my view it wasn't Trump who was the rude party at that point, and that's why it isn't focused upon, though it's actually the more interesting part.
It's interesting because Ramos tried to expressly pin him down to justifying his positions and Trump managed to condense into about one minute his entire repertoire of evasion and deflection, so much so fast that Ramos was unable to keep up without himself being rude and ungraciousness, the onus falling back upon him of the very behavior that in Trump is a key part of the critique he is looking to justify.
Posted by: a a | 27 August 2015 at 12:17 AM
Well, let me apologize for posting twice, for some reason I was unable to see my earlier second comment and re-did it, hit send, and the re-did version vanished and now I see the original.
Posted by: a a | 27 August 2015 at 12:19 AM
Watch it again, Trump is out of ammo just at the point he manages to get away from him but Ramos has no way forward.
Posted by: a a | 27 August 2015 at 12:21 AM
a a
All comments here are moderated before they are posted, or not posted. be patient. This is an amateur operation. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 27 August 2015 at 09:58 AM
AEL
Typepad claims to have solved the problem with the RSS feed. Let me know if that is true. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 27 August 2015 at 10:06 AM