Univision's senior news anchor, Jorge Ramos, is always at his most candid not when appearing on CNN or Fox News, or even on domestic Spanish-language television, but rather when addressing audiences outside the United States.
In an interview with Spain’s El Intermedio, Ramos discussed a broad range of subjects: from racism to the midterm elections to the immigrant caravans from Central America, as well as the #Resistance movement in its manifold forms. Several pieces of the interview caught our attention, but one of the standouts, most certainly, was when Ramos spoke admiringly of the mobs that organize to harass conservatives.
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: There’s an entire current within the United States that has emerged in opposition to Donald Trump but that are doing wonderful things. You have the Dreamers, these kids that arrived here undocumented, that have organized wonderfully, that go into senators’ and congressmens’ offices. They don’t allow them to eat in restaurants and harass them wherever they go.
As you can see from reading the full transcript below, Ramos's professed love of the mobs that maraud conservatives came in response to his interviewer's question about whether there is any good news to report for Latinos during the Trump era. For Ramos, the maurading mobs are among the “wonderful things” that have emerged in opposition to Trump.
In other words, the leading Hispanic news figure in the United States considers the physical harassment of individuals to the point where they can’t peacefully dine out or carry out official duties to be “wonderful.” This also explains, in part, the prominent platform he gave to the liberal activist who confronted outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator. If it is “wonderful” to Ramos, it is going to get top billing on Univision, as well as on his weekly Facebook Watch show.
Ramos clearly endorses harassment at restaurants, such as the one conducted in September by the D.C.-based Democratic Socialists of America group known as “Smash Racism” that sought to run Sen.Ted Cruz and his wife out of a downtown Washington, D.C. restaurant, as well as a similarly organized leftist disruption of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's meal at a restaurant near the White House. Curiously enough, Ramos denounced, however, that same mob’s recent attack on the private residence of Tucker Carlson.
I've debated @TuckerCarlson on @FoxNews many times. I don't agree with his ideas, at all. But threatening behavior in front of his house, against his family and publishing his address is totally unacceptable and inexcusable. Fight ideas with ideas, not violence. https://t.co/McrjIGNGja
— JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) November 8, 2018
It is good to know that Ramos draws the line somewhere, although one is left wondering whether his Johnny come lately denunciation of the attack on the Carlson residence is legitimate, or whether this is merely a backtrack of convenience.
Perhaps Carlson and Ramos can explore this point together the next time Ramos comes on to talk about caravans or other illegal immigration-related matters.
Below is the full transcript of the above-referenced El Intermedio interview:
GUILLERMO FESSER, U.S. CORRESPONDENT, EL INTERMEDIO: Hello, humans. Univision Noticias, Jorge Ramos, Jorge Ramos, Univision Noticias, the host with the most, the Spanish-speaking voice that reports in the United States.
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
FESSER: Two years have passed.
RAMOS: Yes.
FESSER: Where were we two years ago, those of us that speak Spanish, the Latinos, the Hispanics, whatever you want to call us, and where are we now? What happened with the Trump grinder, that is, what did it break? What has happened here?
RAMOS: It’s been...from the vantage point of minorities and Latinos, it’s been a very terrible journey. The economy is going very well. In other words, unemployment levels in the United States for all groups, including Latinos, are the lowest in years. In some cases, they’re the lowest of all time. That’s the positive. The negative is that we’re being pounded from all sides. In other words, Donald Trump calls us criminals and rapists, all of us. There are new laws in order to deport increasingly more people. All who come from abroad runs the risk of, despite requesting political asylum, of of being rejected. There are constant attacks on social media, and personally, against minorities, to such, to such a degree that you feel like this isn't your country. There is danger for many mixed families, that is, (made up) of people that are citizens and of undocumented, of not knowing whether the parents will be able to come home because they might be deported. There is an anti-immigrant climate the likes of which I’ve never seen in the 35 years that I’ve been here.
FESSER: How do you view the march by these terrible criminals that come from honduras and Guatemala? Terrible criminals with, that are mothers and babies and such because
RAMOS: I just, I just returned from over there. And, what are they? They’re mostly Central Americans, largely from Honduras. Close to 7,000 left originally, (including) about 2,500 children who, according to UNICEF, all they are asking for is political asylum. They want to be political asylees in the United States. (Both) International and U.S. laws allow for that but Donald Trump is portraying them as criminals, full of diseases, as a national security threat. Along the U.S.-Mexico border there is a far larger military presence than the American military presence in Iraq or Syria. This, then, is precisely the threat that Donald Trump is selling Americans. He is saying, “they are invading us.” In a country where, with 320 million residents, 5,000 or 4,000 or 7,000
FESSER: Immigration isn’t currently a problem in the United States, is it?
RAMOS: It isn’t.
FESSER: The current economy, and knowing that if you go to a restaurant the guy that is serving your soup is Mexican, if you go to a field the guy picking your beets is a Mexican. If you pull Mexicans out of this country, it’ll be like in Spain when we expelled, first the Jews and then the Arabs, and we were left in the aforementioned fields with no one to pick anything for us.
RAMOS: It’s a problem: there’s a demographic revolution in the United States, and we Latinos are 60 million. When I arrived to this country in ‘83 we were 15 million, and within 30 years we’ll be over 100 million. One out every three people in the United States will be Hispanic. They’ll be like us. Very well. The problem is that we’ve not gone from great numbers to power. We don’t have political power. We’re close to 20% of the population, but have only 4 senators. 4 out of 100. And 29% of Latinos voted for Donald Trump. That, to many, is inexplicable. There are…
FESSER: And what is the explanation for the few?
RAMOS: The explanation is that there are people that feel totally identified with this country, that believe the same things that Donald Trump believes. If you vote for someone, you partially resemble that. And also that, among Latinos, there are very conservative values that are commonly held with the Republican Party, President Trump’s party. The, the religious issue, the importance of family, the abortion issue. This explains, in part, why one out of three Hispanics vote for Trump and is so conservative.
FESSER: The latest Trump thing is that people born in the United States automatically, because of the Constitution, become U.S. citizens. But Donald Trump says, now, perhaps alfo in order to avoid the Latinos that, according to him, come here to give birth because it seems that everyone is interested in becoming American, no one wants to live in their own home(land), they come voluntarily, and now he wants to take away the right of someone born here to be considered and to have all the rights.
RAMOS: Donald Trump is an anti-immigrant president, opposed not only to those who look and sound different than he does, but to those who come from abroad. And he is reflecting the terrible anxieties of white people in this country, who in 2044, we’re all going to be minorities in this country...whites, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans. Everyone. And that’s the great fear that Donald Trump represents. That is, that Trump is saying to white people, “there’s increasingly less of us, but don’t worry because I’ll make sure that whites remain the majority in this country.”
FESSER: Back to immigration. You’ve returned from seeing this caravan (full) of so many desperate humans.
RAMOS: Yes.
FESSER: Because we’re ultimately in the age of desperation. What do you think is going to happen? The armed forces, what are they going to do? In other words, how do you see, how do you imagine, on the Univision anchor desk, what story will you tell? What’s going to happen, huh?
RAMOS: You know, in the end, if I had to choose between betting on Trump’s idea or the immigrants’ idea, immigrants always win out. Trump will lose again. Because what these 7,000 will do, and then a second and a third caravan and and there will be a fourth and a fifth and ten other caravans. What happens is that they arrive at the border and there’s (their) fear and hunger are far greater than Donald Trump. And so, they’ll arrive at the borde r- they’ve gambled everything. And they’ve gambled everything because they’ve lost everything. And so, they simply don’t return. They stay along the border with Mexico, they get through little by little, on a drip, one by one they request asylum and then they stay here. I think I’d do the same. In other words, if I lived in Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, and my teenaged son could potentially be recruited by the gangs, or my daughter could be raped if she didn’t accept the gangs’ conditions, then, what would I do? I think I’d leave.
FESSER: Elections.
RAMOS: Yes.
FESSER: The U.S., two years of Trump, we’ve talked about the oppression, the disaster, this grinder that is demolishing so many things. But is there something positive that we might say, "man, in reaction it turns out that there’s an angry woman in Wyoming that...is there something? Something?
RAMOS: There’s, there are wonderful things. There’s an entire current within the United States that has emerged in opposition to Donald Trump but that are doing wonderful things. You have the Dreamers, these kids that arrived here undocumented, that have organized wonderfully, that go into Senators’ and Congressmens’ offices. They don’t allow them to eat in restaurants and harass them wherever they go.
FESSER: They do the famous mass harassments.
RAMOS: Until they change the immigration laws. We live 40 minutes away from the Parkland school in Florida where, several months ago, 17 students and teachers were murdered. These...
FESSER: How moving.
RAMOS: ...high school kids are changing gun laws in the United States. There’s a very strong “Me Too” movement, (comprised) of women, above all young women, that is changing the balance of power within all the corporations and within the government, so I see very positive things here. I am still a very optimist guy with a lot of hope.
FESSER: Well, we’ll leave on that note. There are elections. Whoever wins, there is hope among humans. We’re saying goodbye. Thank you very much, Jorge Ramos.
RAMOS: Humans, is that how you sign off?
FESSER: Yes. Goodbye.
RAMOS: See you later. Thanks.
