The star anchor at Univision and Fusion has penned yet another preening column, this time, scolding America for having elected Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. But the only thing that Ramos managed to signal here, beyond progressive virtue, was precisely how out of touch he is with the country he purports to lecture.
Ramos' recent column, titled "I no longer recognize this country", was the subject of his most recent interview with Sean Hannity. The column, not unlike his Hannity interview, is full of contradictions and tired talking points. But without Hannity to challenge him, Ramos is unfettered to rattle off his propaganda. Here's an interesting portion that came up during the Hannity debate:
Now, anyone who “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense” may be deported, even if they were never convicted. Also, immigrants who have committed “fraud … before a government agency” are to be deported as well — which presumably applies to any noncitizen who has ever used a fake driver’s license or made up a Social Security number in order to work.
Translation: Deporting almost all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. is now a priority. If this is truly the case, will there soon be widespread raids on homes or workplaces? This executive order makes it seem that anyone who is deemed deportable by an immigration officer is at risk.
And now recall that while on Hannity, Ramos suggested that this type of fraud and identity theft is really not a "crime-crime", unlike his fallback offenses of terrorism and rape:
SEAN HANNITY: Should every criminal illegal immigrant be thrown out of this country? Every one.
JORGE RAMOS: If they committed a crime.
HANNITY: Any crime.
RAMOS: A real crime? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, the problem is. How do you define a crime. For instance...
HANNITY: Ok, how about driving drunk, driving drunk on our streets? Using drugs?
RAMOS: If you use a Social Security number, a fake driver's license, would that be considered a crime?
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The electoral ratification of a shift in our nation's immigration policy - from laxitude to enforcement - seems to be the sole basis of Ramos' failure to recognize the country he has lived in for close to 34 years. But had Ramos made an effort to know the country that has shown him such generosity instead of devoting himself to activism disguised as journalism, the result would not have caught him and his Univision colleagues by such surprise. As we said a week after the election:
After dividing Latinos against each other and against the rest of the population en route to claiming them for Democrats and for Hillary Clinton, Ramos had to stare into the abyss of his Election Night humiliation and admit that he was wrong. In so doing, he obtusely triples down on the things that led to his embarrassing defeat.
First, there's the continued bigotry expressed against Latinos who don't think like him (In case you didn't know, "Latinos...who forgot their origins" is vintage Ramos code for "race-traitor"). Second, there is an admission of a flaming double-standard when it came to Hillary Clinton. Ramos violated his own code of ethics by giving greater weight to Trump's parade of politically incorrect statements than to Clinton's grotesque corruption. The rest of his response seems to confirm open partisan intent then and going forward, as suggested by all that "we" stuff when talking about the opposition and about being an opposition journalist.
Some time ago, Ramos admitted that he understood the risks to his credibility by taking such open stances. 2016 will be remembered as the year that Jorge Ramos gambled away his credibility. America, however, is about second chances and redemption. Here's hoping that Ramos -as well as the rest of the media- acknowledges the scope and breadth of his failings and strives to hold all sides accountable going forward. This is certainly a much more constructive endeavor than the current lashing-out we've seen so far.
The column, like the Hannity segment is divided in two acts: the first being the immigration portion, and the second being the temporary travel ban. Here again, the facts diverge from Ramos' opinions. In this case, Ramos' own newscast belied his assertion that no one from the seven countries ever carried out any attacks on U.S. soil. Was he not in the studio when this story ran?
It is clear that Ramos has still learned nothing from the election's crushing effect on his or his network's credibility. If the opposite were true, we would see factual reporting that considers all sides of today's policy discussions, rather than a tripling down on activism and preening columns that seem sourced from Univision affiliate The Onion.
