This interview is perhaps the most consequential to emerge from Univision's still-smoking post-electoral rubble. Over the course of a few minutes, we are shown a definitive editorial direction, and we are treated to admissions that were unimaginable a little over a month ago.
Here's the most telling bit from Jorge Ramos' sit-down with Trump Hispanic Advisory Board member and former Puerto Rico Attorney General José Fuentes:
JORGE RAMOS, ANCHOR, UNIVISION: But Donald Trump had talked about deporting three million. It would be like two-thousand per day. That is a horror for our families.
In the interest of context, it should be noted that this admission was part of a broader exchange on immigration. Fuentes calmly rebuffed each of Ramos' talking points - including the notion that Trump wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. Fuentes drew Ramos' remark by emphasizing that the incoming administration would focus first on securing the border and deporting criminal aliens. It is at this point that Ramos bemoans the "horror for our families".
This reflexive resistance to the imposition of any immigration control - no matter how minimal, not to mention reasonable - is not new to readers of this byline. Recall that Ramos lectured the father of a young murder victim on immigration reform during last summer's Republican national convention. If nothing else, at least he's consistent. One wonders whether Ramos even bothered to take the horror of the Shaw or Steinle families (just to name a few) into account before arriving at this ill-considered position.
Regardless, it is clear that there will be no chastening at Univision, no serious reflection as to how Trump won a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote despite everything that the network threw at him over the course of eighteen months. In Ramos' view there can be no deportations whatsoever, not even of aliens that accrued criminal records depite not even being supposed to be here.
The interview is also notable because Ramos now identifies and discloses his opinions as such on TV. Nothing as wild as his columns, just "in my opinion" qualifiers to a couple of quick statements. Still, it's a good start.
Maybe Ramos HAS learned something, after all.
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