Meet the Press host Chuck Todd joined Andrea Mitchell on the latter’s Friday show to talk about Alex Acosta's resignation as Secretary of Labor, but their subject matter eventually changed to Trump's poll numbers with Hispanics with Todd eventually asking, "How many different ways does the Republican Party want to alienate Hispanics?"
After days of Democrats and the media pressuring Acosta to step down, Mitchell asked Todd, "Does it matter he no longer has any Hispanic in the cabinet?" Todd, acting as if he was insulted by the question, responded rhetorically, "This is going to be the reason Hispanics don't support this president?" Todd went on to cite the "census fight and his gloating about ICE raids" as reasons why Hispanics do not support Trump.
According to the New York Times, not exactly a Trump friendly publication, those "ICE raids" are targeting people who have already received deportation orders, some in absentia, and who recently illegally entered the country. As for the census, a Harvard/Harris poll shows that 55% of Hispanics support a citizenship question on the census.
Todd continued his diatribe:
What do we think the Hispanic vote is going to look like in a decade by party with what’s happening. This may short term allow the president to keep that base fired up, but the long term damage to the Republican Party with—it looks like a target campaign to alienate Hispanics away from the Trump version of the Republican Party.
It was a nice rhetorical trick for Todd to say "the Trump version of the Republican Party" as if he believes there is another version of the party that would appeal better to Hispanics. Unfortunately for Todd, we were not born yesterday and therefore we can find out that in 2011, for example, he was saying that the Mitt Romney version of the Republican Party would alienate Hispanics.
In an attempt to condemn Trump and the Republican Party as racists, Chuck Todd presented incomplete facts and arguably was himself the one with racial biases, because it was he who just assumed that a group of people think a certain way because of their race.
Here is a transcript of the July 12 show:
MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell Reports
12:21 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: That is what the president saw as well, Chuck, because Acosta's defense was awkward in the extreme. It was not a vigorous defense as we’ve seen
CHUCK TODD: He was a lawyer up there, actually. Whether it--
MITCHELL: But he was misstating the case.
TODD: Right, but he acting, he was being lawyerly about it. There wasn't the Brett Kavanaugh “go get, own on the libs” moment, which of course is what the president would prefer. It doesn't matter what the facts are. Bulldoze your way through, right? That is the Trump style--
MITCHELL: Does it matter he no longer has any Hispanic in the cabinet?
TODD: This is going to be the reason Hispanics don't support this president? I mean, you look at the census. I'll say this when you combine the census fight and his gloating about ICE raids, I know he does this for base stoking. We keep saying this, but how many different ways does the Republican Party want to alienate Hispanics. This feels like -- Pete Wilson would blush at this when you think about what happened in 1994 in California, the famous Prop-187 that basically turned California to a swing state to a blue state because of the way the Republican Party was seen as the party that was Hispanics and against immigration.MITCHELL: Former governor and former senator Pete Wilson, a Republican
TODD: What do we think the Hispanic vote is going to look like in a decade by party with what’s happening. This may short term allow the president to keep that base fired up, but the long term damage to the Republican Party with—it looks like a target campaign to alienate Hispanics away from the Trump version of the Republican Party.
