MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart was greatly confused on his Wednesday show why a growing number of Latinos are supporting Donald Trump. To help him find an answer, he welcomed contributor Paola Ramos to promote her new book on the subject, which boils down to some Latinos are also be anti-Latino racists.
Diaz-Balart set the table, “Let's talk about Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America. So, among the things that you highlight in this book, which I agree with Stuart on, everybody’s got to get, is the growing number of Latinos, many immigrants or children of immigrants who oppose unrestricted immigration. Explain how that apparent dichotomy exists.”
Folks on the left often like to claim that the idea that they support “unrestricted immigration” is a strawman, but here is Diaz-Balart lamenting that a “growing number of Latinos” don’t support it.
As for Ramos, she immediately began by ringing the alarm bells, “I think, just as a bottom line, and I think we should be alarmed at the idea that someone like Donald Trump, in a state like Arizona, is polling close to 40 percent with Latino voters.”
In seeking to explain why, Ramos toyed with the idea that they are race traitors, “Part of that is because there is a small, but growing group of Latino voters that are warming up to the idea of mass deportation, and just to be very brief, I think what Trumpism is betting on is this idea that there's a segment of Latinos that have become so Americanized and so assimilated that they, too, can, sort of, tap into the nativism and they too can tap into the otherizing and the, sort of, us versus them game.”
She also tried to claim that these Trump-supporting Latinos are just trying to appease the racists that also support Trump in hopes that they can avoid the hate:
There's research out there to ground us in the fear that some Latinos are feeling in this moment. When you look at the way anti-Latino hate crimes have been rising over the last eight years, you know when it really spikes, when mainstream media, when Donald Trump, when politicians pay so much attention to this idea of an “invasion” at the Southern border, this idea of chaos, of immigrants being criminals and there are some Latinos that don't want to be lumped with immigrants, that want to protect themselves from that type of discrimination and hatred, and so that explains why some Latinos in the quest to prove they too are American would find something appealing in Trumpism.
The unspoken assumption is that Latinos who immigrated legally are supposed to view themselves as analogues to people who rush the border or that they are supposed to be unconcerned with crime because the criminal is of the same race. That’s obviously ridiculous, and if Ramos truly believes that, she should be prepared to be “alarmed” far more frequently.
Here is a transcript for the September 25 show:
MSNBC Jose Diaz-Balart Reports
9/25/2024
11:53 PM ET
JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Let's talk about Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America. So, among the things that you highlight in this book, which I agree with Stuart on, everybody’s got to get, is the growing number of Latinos, many immigrants or children of immigrants who oppose unrestricted immigration. Explain how that apparent dichotomy exists.
PAOLA RAMOS: Look, I think, just as a bottom line, and I think we should be alarmed at the idea that someone like Donald Trump, in a state like Arizona, is polling close to 40 percent with Latino voters and part of that is because there is a small, but growing group of Latino voters that are warming up to the idea of mass deportation, and just to be very brief, I think what Trumpism is betting on is this idea that there's a segment of Latinos that have become so Americanized and so assimilated that they, too, can, sort of, tap into the nativism and they too can tap into the otherizing and the, sort of, us versus them game.
There's research out there to ground us in the fear that some Latinos are feeling in this moment. When you look at the way anti-Latino hate crimes have been rising over the last eight years, you know when it really spikes, when mainstream media, when Donald Trump, when politicians pay so much attention to this idea of an “invasion” at the Southern border, this idea of chaos, of immigrants being criminals and there are some Latinos that don't want to be lumped with immigrants, that want to protect themselves from that type of discrimination and hatred, and so that explains why some Latinos in the quest to prove they too are American would find something appealing in Trumpism.
