After 38 years, Univision’s longtime anchor Jorge Ramos recently stepped away from the anchor desk and sailed off into the unknown. His career at Univision has certainly come to a close, but as we see in a recent column, his Trump Derangement rages on.
In a screed titled “Planet Trump”, originally published at Mexico’s Reforma before posting on his eponymous website, Ramos self-righteously huffs about Trump’s proposed moves within our hemisphere. He opens with:
Let's start with three facts: one, the Panama Canal is from Panama; two, Greenland is not for sale; and three, the Mexican territory belongs to Mexico and no one else. But all these things don't seem to matter to Donald Trump, who believes that the world is his.
Trump has not yet taken office and already wants to change the geography.
In a 90-minute speech before a conservative group in Phoenix, the still president-elect presented his vision of how he would like to reorganize the world. And without caring about the sovereignty of various nations, he exposed his new maps for a Planet Trump.
Reasonable individuals can conclude that Jorge Ramos never recovered from the gradual loss of influence and credibility resulting from his Trump derangement. His staged ejection from Trump’s 2015 Iowa press conference turned out to be his career apex. He wrote several books and won several “journalism” awards, but his influence among everyday Hispanics waned. Despite his howling at Trump, both on Univision air and in print, Hispanics increasingly voted the other way- with Trump garnering a record 46% of the Hispanic vote in 2024.
Having lost the ability to advocate for Hispanics in the United States, Ramos now takes his unsolicited advocacies to Panama and Greenland.
He wants to take away Panama's canal. Trump said it was “stupid” for the United States to return the canal to Panama in 1999 through the Torrijos-Carter agreements (signed in 1977). “It was returned to Panama, and to the people of Panama, but it has some conditions,” Trump said. “They are ripping us off in the Panama Canal, just like they are ripping us off everywhere.” He was referring to the costs to cargo ships for crossing the canal, which he described as “ridiculous” and “very unfair.”
…
Trump wants to take the island of Greenland, the largest in the world, away from Denmark. In fact, he wants to buy it even though it is not for sale.
“For reasons of national security and freedom around the world,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network, “the United States feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
…
Trump undoubtedly suffers from billionaire syndrome, believing that everything is negotiable and can be bought. Making an attempt to buy Greenland – even if it has great strategic and military importance – is as absurd as trying to take over Australia or Madagascar. There are things that are priceless.
“Billionaire syndrome” is the tell that Ramos just wants to reflexively lash out at Trump, who won despite years of his “advocacy”. And, in many ways, Ramos reveals that his “contrapoder” gimmick is not a serious one. This is the column that Ramos writes on the heels of the National Archives’ lawsuit-induced release of photos depicting then Vice-President Biden introducing his son Hunter to Xi Jinping and other assorted Chinese businessmen, and of the devastating Wall Street Journal exposé of the Biden White House’s conspiracy to hide his obvious mental decline from the American people. On these issues, Ramos conveniently looks the other way, as do his comrades in Spanish-language media. So much for standing opposed to corruption and public lies.
Jorge Ramos might be gone from the airwaves for the time being but, as his latest column reveals, he has not yet grasped that his audience left him long beforehand. Or understood why.
Click “expand” to view a full transcript of the aforementioned column, as published on jorgeramos.com on Monday, December 30th, 2024:
Let's start with three facts: one, the Panama Canal is from Panama; two, Greenland is not for sale; and three, the Mexican territory belongs to Mexico and no one else. But all these things don't seem to matter to Donald Trump, who believes that the world is his.
Trump has not yet taken office and already wants to change the geography.
In a 90-minute speech before a conservative group in Phoenix, the still president-elect presented his vision of how he would like to reorganize the world. And without caring about the sovereignty of various nations, he exposed his new maps for a Planet Trump.
He wants to take away Panama's canal. Trump said it was “stupid” for the United States to return the canal to Panama in 1999 through the Torrijos-Carter agreements (signed in 1977). “It was returned to Panama, and to the people of Panama, but it has some conditions,” Trump said. “They are ripping us off in the Panama Canal, just like they are ripping us off everywhere.” He was referring to the costs to cargo ships for crossing the canal, which he described as “ridiculous” and “very unfair.”
The response from the president of Panama, José Mulino, was immediate. “Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area IS FROM PANAMA,” he said in capital letters in a statement published on social networks. “The sovereignty and independence of our country is not negotiable.” To which Trump responded, also on social media: “we'll see.” In addition, he posted an image with the American flag and the phrase “Welcome to the United States Canal.”
Trump wants to take the island of Greenland, the largest in the world, away from Denmark. In fact, he wants to buy it even though it is not for sale.
“For reasons of national security and freedom around the world,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network, “the United States feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
But Greenlanders, who have never been asked if they want to be Trump's fellow citizens, see it differently. “Greenland is ours,” Prime Minister Mute Egede responded in writing. “It is not for sale and will never be for sale. We must never lose our fight for freedom.” Greenland is a semi-autonomous nation and constituent of the kingdom of Denmark.
Trump undoubtedly suffers from billionaire syndrome, believing that everything is negotiable and can be bought. Making an attempt to buy Greenland – even if it has great strategic and military importance – is as absurd as trying to take over Australia or Madagascar. There are things that are priceless.
And with respect to Mexico, the situation is more complex. It is not about invading or appropriating Mexican territory, but about opening the possibility of carrying out military operations or US special forces against drug cartels within Mexico.
Trump said in Phoenix that as soon as he takes possession of the White House, “he is going to immediately designate the cartels as terrorist organizations.” This would put them on the same State Department list as Isis or Al-Qaeda, among many others. Trump has blamed Mexican cartels for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans due to fentanyl overdoses.
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, is right to clarify in her morning press conference that Trump never spoke “about the intervention of Mexico, ever.” But the reality is that other groups designated as terrorists have been attacked directly and in several countries by United States military forces, without any concerns about the question of sovereignty.
In fact, a recent Rolling Stone magazine report quotes an official on Trump's transition team asking: "How much should we invade Mexico?" The options, according to the magazine's sources, range from drone attacks on safe houses and laboratories, to the use of advisors and special forces to assassinate or kidnap cartel leaders.
Sheinbaum, however, is confident that there will be a cooperation agreement in several areas, including drug trafficking, with the United States. The problem is that Trump can never be trusted. He does only what suits him.
Trump is neither an intellectual nor a historian and, as we have seen, he has very little respect for borders. Now he is inventing his own planet—Planet Trump—and in that imaginary world, the United States would recover the Panama Canal, buy Greenland, and stop, in its tracks, immigrants and drugs crossing the border with Mexico. Trump also claims that, if he had been president, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine or Hamas attacked Israel.
Trump operates with a very basic concept—peace through strength—and believes that power is not hidden, it is exercised. And when Trump gets an idea in his head, almost no one can convince him otherwise.
Get ready: in less than a month he will feel unstoppable.
