It was billed as a roundtable with Latino leaders, but it was actually Donald Trump who appeared Tuesday at his Doral Golf Club in Miami in a series of appreciative monologues from his most loyal Latino supporters.
Small talk like this concerns issues that directly affect Latino voters, among whom Trump has falsely claimed to be in the lead. Even though surveys show significant evidence to the contrary.
His comments on immigration, for example, were limited to unfounded and often aired claims that foreign countries, particularly Venezuela, were opening their prisons to send “violent gang members” and drug traffickers armed with military weapons to the United States.
And his comments, aimed at many business owners and leaders, were clear on policy, aside from a promise to maintain the generous tax cuts of his first term.
“We gave them the biggest tax cut in the history of the country,” he said. “We have a great foundation to build on, so we have a lot of companies coming in very quickly.”
A Voto Latino poll, released Monday and cited, found Trump trailing Harris in every key state among Latinos, while the most recent AS/COA poll shows a 56-31 preference for Harris nationally. among 36 million eligible Latino voters.
However, there is evidence that Trump is gaining the Democratic lead among Latino voters to the lowest level in four presidential election cycles. NBC News Poll.
Perhaps with this in mind, Trump appealed directly to the Latino electorate for the second time in less than a week at Tuesday's roundtable.
“We are going to talk about what is happening in the elections. We’ll take some fake news questions,” he said after a grand reception on stage.
In the end, he took nothing and made sure not to make a mistake at a town hall hosted by Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the United States, in Miami last Thursday. Immigration questions from undecided voters. At that event, Springfield, Ohio, denied that Haitians were eating seafood and “other things they shouldn't.”
Tuesday's audience, a pre-selected gallery of die-hard loyalists at Trump National Doral, booed loudly at every insult, with no dialogue. Trump called his Democratic opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Kamala Harris, “an idiot” after she falsely labeled Joe Biden a “border czar” during a brief segment on immigration.
His comments quickly turned into an attack on Democrats for allowing transgender athletes to participate in women's sports, and he told a somewhat fictional story of “a man, congratulations, who became a woman.” head and “these young women said they had never seen anything like it.”
Calling Harris a “far-left lunatic,” he added: “There is a disease in our country. We must end the disease.
Perhaps sensing that things were off topic, event host Jennifer Korn, a former White House aide and executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, attempted to interject: “Mr. President…”
“I want to leave it at that,” Trump said. “Does anyone else want to say something?”
Robert Unanu, president of Goya Foods, the largest Latino company in the United States and a long-time cheerleader for the former president and his lies that the 2020 election was stolen, stepped up to take the microphone and deliver a long speech praising Trump. .
“I can't believe your courage, your fight, I know why you are doing this. You don't do this for nothing, but because you love this country. “You love us and we love you,” he said.
“The other side of love, building and creation is hate, destruction and division, and that's what happened. “We have gone from a land of opportunity to a land of exploitation, and the exploiter in chief is Kamala Harris and this administration.”
Unanu is not the only Latino business figure who has been praised. Joel Garza, owner of several Sonic fast-food franchises and another veteran of Trump's platform, said the former president should be re-elected “to help us with the banks.” [and] “Stop Regulation”.
“The last three and a half years, bad years for companies, inflation, interest rates, banks, prices, everything, nothing compares to 2017 to 2020 when you were in the White House,” Garza said.
However, at the end of the roundtable, a group of religious leaders surrounded Trump, who sat at the table, eyes closed and hands on his shoulders.
“We are raising up a man who we believe you should put in your hands to help restore America and return it to a place of honor,” Ramiro Peña, one of Trump's most influential Latino evangelicals, made a direct appeal. the heavens
Honduran televangelist Guillermo Maldonado, founder of the Miami megachurch King Jesus International Ministries, closed the event with a prediction that Trump would defeat Harris because “he has a higher mission: to end this nation.”
“It's a war between good and evil,” he said. “God appoints kings. Eliminate kings. Let us pray that God's will be fulfilled [Trump] 47th president.”
