Donald Trump’s latest immigration speech served as a wake-up call to the Donald’s Latino surrogates. In the last 48 hours, dozens of them have abandoned ship. Well, one of the notable exceptions revealed why he’s still standing by Trump. He believes that only the Donald can save this country from being overwhelmed by–wait for it–taco trucks.
According to CBS News political commentator Leslie Sanchez, most of Trump’s Hispanic advisory board is about to abandon him.
Hispanic leader who advises Trump camp telling me half of Trump's Hispanic advisory board is ready to resign today (15 of 30)
— Leslie Sanchez (@LeslieSanchez) September 1, 2016
One board member who is still standing by the Donald is Marco Gutierrez, a Mexican-born businessman who is the founder of Latinos for Trump. He stopped by MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” to talk about the speech. Watch here.
When guest host Joy Reid asked him if Trump was hurting the GOP’s outreach to Latino voters, Gutierrez declared–with a straight face–that he didn’t think Trump was doing any harm to that cause. Never mind that recent polling shows Trump is doing worse among Latinos than Mitt Romney did four years ago.
Reid suggested that Trump’s speech could spell finis to any hope of the GOP gaining any traction among Hispanics–much like Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign all but ended any chance of the GOP garnering any black support worth mentioning. But Gutierrez disagreed. While it was a “tough message to deliver,” Gutierrez believes someone needs to say that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” He claimed it was the only way to solve a serious problem in our culture.
When Reid asked Gutierrez what that problem was, Gutierrez gave an answer that has to be reproduced in full to be believed.
“My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
Reid was having none of it, saying, “I don’t even know what that means, and I’m afraid to ask.” She somehow managed to keep her composure while asking New York state senator Adriano Espaillat–who is well on his way to succeeding Charlie Rangel in Congress–what he thought. Espaillat, a native Dominican, was just as dumbfounded. He said, in a colossal understatement, that he was “offended.”
Gutierrez tried to tell us what exactly he meant–and failed.
“The Spanish never conquered Mexico. We are a culture that has a lot of good things that we bring to the United States, but we also have problems. You guys are going nuts over something, there’s a ten-step to this problem, and you guys are already talking about the ten-step.”
Espaillat reminded Gutierrez that in Latino culture, “mi casa, tu casa”–or “my house, your house.” Latino culture, he explained, is a very welcoming culture that shares others’ values. However, Gutierrez claimed that Espaillat was living in a fantasy world; there is a “new Mexico” arising that is teeming with crime. So apparently these taco trucks are supposed to be conduits for crime, then? Yeah, okay.
It turns out that Gutierrez was already ranting about taco trucks before going on the air. He went on a long YouTube rant on Thursday afternoon along the same lines of his MSNBC interview. Watch here, if you can stand it.
Well, now we know what it takes to be a Latino Trump supporter. Consider that this bizarre claim from Gutierrez comes just days after top Trump black surrogate Mark Burns tweeted a picture of Hillary in blackface. Just like Burns, Gutierrez is a caricature. Sounds like Trump’s minority outreach is nothing more than astroturf.
