CNN’s David Gergen framed President Donald Trump and the broader Republican Party as hostile toward Hispanics during his Monday punditry.
Trump’s recent pardoning of Joe Arpaio amounted to an insult to Hispanics, said Gergen:
This sends a message from Trump, and increasingly from the Republican Party. That if you’re Latino, you’re not welcome in our party.
Gergen suggested that Trump’s “base” of voters is bigoted against Hispanics.
It’s incredulous that this isn’t part of Republicans’ understanding, now, after what happened in California. There was an incident in California, of course, Proposition 187 some years ago, it was seen as anti-Latino, and California’s been a Democratic state ever since.
Gergen and other CNN personalities regularly frame Hispanics as broadly supportive of affording citizenship to foreigners illegally in the country, further implying that Republican political success depends on appealing to allegedly widespread support among Hispanics for amnestying illegal immigrants.
Watch Gergen’s comments below.
Trump received a larger share of Hispanic voters than either John McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney in 2012.
CNN’s Douglas Brinkley agreed with Gergen’s assessment, describing Arpaio as “anti-Latino, a “race-baiter,” and the “kingpin of racial profiling.”
Trump’s pardoning of Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey approached Texas’s gulf coast was “a bit demented,” added Brinkley. Two weeks ago, Brinkley surmised that “10 to 15%” of “Trump’s base” is composed of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners and assorted white racial nationalists.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.