Donald Trump’s interview with Noticias Univision on Thursday clearly revealed the 2024 Republican front-runner’s pitch to Latino voters. The former president will placate them and exploit the community’s political divisions to no end, all with the hope that if Trump becomes his party’s nominee, he can sway more Latino support for a return to the White House.
At the start of the interview, journalist and Televisa anchor Enrique Acevedo cited how a New York Times/Siena poll showed Trump with 42% of Latino support across six battleground states.
Such remarks will elicit only a fraction of the outrage or pushback Trump received when he first ran for president.
Trump’s initial reaction was filled with praise and compliments. It was a far cry from his now infamous anti-Mexican, anti-Latino claims during the 2016 campaign that Mexico was sending drug dealers and rapists to take over the U.S., or the time he told anchor Jorge Ramos to “go back to Univision” when Trump felt Ramos had spoken out of turn at a press conference.
“The Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial. All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump told Acevedo in English on Thursday night. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me. You know, there’s never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican, and we have tremendous support from the, I call Hispanic, Latino, you have lots of different terms. But it all means the same thing as far as I’m concerned. It’s, they’re just great people, incredible people. And they also want security if they’re in the United States or if they’re in Mexico or anywhere else. They feel strong about security, and we provide that.”
Those compliments soon veered into other realities that Latinos in the U.S. has grappled with for years. Those “coming in legally” like Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans should be lauded, Trump told Acevedo. But countries like El Salvador and Honduras “are not sending their best.”
“They’re sending us MS13. They’re sending us gang members from all over the place. They’re sending us people that have mental problems from mental institutions” he said. Later in the interview, he even compared those immigrants to a fictional character. “That’s ‘Silence of the Lambs.’ That’s Hannibal Lecter. You ever hear of Hannibal Lecter? Not a nice person. But these are people that are very, very disturbed, very, very mentally ill. They’re being dropped into the United States.” (Trump did allow that “good people are coming in, too.”)
Such remarks will elicit only a fraction of the outrage or pushback Trump received when he first ran for president, and not just because his xenophobia is so well documented. Noticias Univision’s decision to broadcast the interview on the main Univision network with Spanish dubbing meant that not only was Trump’s message shared in both languages, but that the Spanish interpreter made the words sound more muted, palatable and measured. Watching the Spanish-language version was like a dubbed movie, with Trump as a native Spanish speaker running for president.
There are plenty of Latinos who see privilege in their American citizenship, enough to the point that it creates real division.
In one sense, sitting down with Univision simply reflects demographic reality: New Census data released this week projected that Latinos will account for 25% of the entire U.S. population by 2060. Trump and his campaign know that the Latino vote will continue to grow out there in 2024, and going “back to Univision” is politically expedient.
But rather than appeal to all Latinos, Trump is playing up historical divisions that were there before he became the face of the Republican Party. There are plenty of Latinos who see privilege in their American citizenship, enough to the point that it creates real division. Battling Biden to a draw among Latino voters would be more than enough for Trump, and concentrating his pitch on some groups may be more effective than a “one size fits all Latinos” approach. Such rhetoric is already working for Trump. Just this week, during his campaign rally in the very Cuban American Florida city of Hialeah, the mayor revealed that he wanted to name a street after Trump. As the Pew Research Center noted this year, in the 2022 midterms “60% of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democrats compared with 39% who supported Republicans. This 21-point margin is smaller than in 2018, when 72% of Hispanic voters favored Democrats and 25% supported Republicans.” (Pew caveats that this shift may not be a matter of voters flipping, but of turnout: “Among Hispanic voters who cast ballots in the 2018 election, 37% did not vote in the 2022 midterms.”) It’s no wonder that the Biden campaign was sending out statements during the interview noting that Trump has repeatedly failed Latinos. The same week of the GOP debate, Democrats rallied in Miami against MAGA extremism. Biden and his team have also been more aggressive in trying to win over Latino voters, especially with polls indicating just 51 percent of Latino voters are interested in the 2024 election. Still, even with indications that the Biden campaign will do everything it can to gain the support of Latino voters in Florida, the future of Latino politics and Democratic success should not be limited to the Spanish language and Latin American culture. Trump’s hyperbole, inaccuracies and outrages do strike a chord with some Latinos, but many are the same Latinos who have always leaned Republican. A winning path is achievable through a U.S. Latino electorate that is younger, more progressive and more English-dominant. While Trump goes all-in on playing up political divisions in the Latino community, Biden’s best bet is to reflect the future of Latino politics — one that is currently evolving — not just to its conventional path.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of "The Latino Newsletter" and co-editor of "Pressing Issues from Free Press." 
