The nation’s Spanish-language media have predictably omitted any coverage of Senator Marco Rubio’s recent searing indictment of both Latino identity politics and Xavier Becerra’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Watch below as Rubio calmly dismantled the Becerra nomination in a Spanish-language interview that aired in Orlando, FL:
JESUS TORRES, 97.9 FM (Orlando, FL): There’s been discussion of the nomination of this official, of Becerra- Xavier Becerra, as Health Secretary. This would obviously mean a Hispanic occupies this position, and you’ve been a critic of his, based on this nomination. The confirmation hearings began yesterday, and whoever leads the (HHS) is going to have a major role with regard to how this pandemic is handled and how we as a nation emerge from it. Are you still a critic of this nomination? Why do you oppose the nomination of Secretary Becerra?
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): I’m 100% opposed, and I’ll tell you why. First of all, on the issue of (Becerra) being Hispanic. Well, I’m also Hispanic, and I ran for president, there were plenty of Hispanic Democrats throughout the country who criticized and attacked me. I’ve had Hispanics oppose me in each of my campaigns so yeah, I’ve never asked anyone to vote for me simply because I’m Hispanic and likewise, no one should ask me to do that. This is about a very important role, which is (HHS). First of all, (Becerra) has no experience in health care. He was the Attorney General of California. Where he did have experience, for example, was in suing nuns and religiously affiliated hospital systems, as well as everyone else, over a variety of social causes that have nothing to do with (health care). So excessive was his overreach that in fact the L.A. Times, a newspaper that is not conservative, criticized him for beating up on those persons. He’s what is referred to in English as a “culture warrior”. And we need someone who is... what we need is someone who is an expert on healthcare issues, specifically at a time like this. He doesn’t have that qualification, and what’s more- it’s troubling... the way he… I know how he used his power as Attorney General of California in order to pound on faith-based groups and everything else. Imagine what he could do with the power (of HHS) as the nation’s Health Secretary.
Rubio laid out a sequence of truths that have gone criminally unreported in Spanish-language media.
The fact is that Latino identity merchants and culture warriors have been after Rubio ever since he emerged on the national scene, over a decade ago.
Univision targeted Rubio early on, and senior anchor Jorge Ramos even devoted an internationally-syndicated opinion column to Rubio's defeat in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. It would be natural, then, for Rubio to scoff at any demand to toe an ethnic line.
Then there's the matter of Becerra. The networks that devote significant time to the arrest of Mrs. El Chapo can’t seem to find the time to report on Becerra’s true record as a persecutor of the faith-based community. Thus, the Hispanic community is woefully unexposed to Becerra’s efforts to compel nuns to pay for contraception or to compel speech from faith-based crisis pregnancy centers, as we noted in Univision’s awful reporting of his Supreme Court smackdown in NIFLA vs. Becerra, which featured this truth-bomb from Justice Anthony Kennedy:
This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression. For here the State requires primarily pro-life pregnancy centers to promote the State’s own preferred message advertising abortions. This compels individuals to contradict their most deeply held beliefs, beliefs grounded in basic philosophical, ethical, or religious precepts, or all of these.
And the history of the Act’s passage and its underinclusive application suggest a real possibility that these individuals were targeted because of their beliefs.
“Targeted for their beliefs” has been Becerra’s calling card as California’s Attorney General. Shame on the networks for attempting to conceal that uncomfortable truth from the communities they claim to champion. The truth emerges, nonetheless.
