During his presidential campaign announcement this week, Donald Trump proudly declared that he would build a “great, great wall” on the border between the United States of America and Mexico because they “are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.” This outreach effort to the U.S. Latino community went about as well you might expect. The rest of the Republican candidates collectively had this to say about Trump’s offensive statement:
This same week, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) held their annual conference in Las Vegas. The National Republican Party’s Latino outreach program memo apparently didn’t make it to the 16 or so declared or likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Only one of them bothered to attend the NALEO conference. In contrast, both of the top Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, attended and made speeches. The Republican who did go was Ben Carson who told the crowd that Latinos don’t care about immigration:
“A lot of people told me what I should talk about when I came here, they said Latino elected officials? You need to talk about immigration,” Carson told the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials on Wednesday afternoon. “Well that’s like when I talk to an [African American] group and they say you need to talk about government entitlements. Give me a break! People have a vast variety of things that they’re interested in and to pigeonhole people into one area I think indicates something more about the person doing the pigeonholing.”
I’m sure this came as a quite a surprise to the NALEO conference attendees. So nice of Ben Carson to explain their own interests to them.
These two events tell you everything you need to know about the GOP’s effort to reach out the crucial Latino vote heading into the 2016 presidential elections. It involves calling them criminals and talking down to them by GOPsplaining what they care about.
Please proceed, Republicans.
