Jorge Ramos is the well-known news anchor on the Spanish language channels Univision and Fusion who was thrown out of a press conference with Donald Trump for asking questions about his immigration plans. Some commentators have criticized Ramos for not waiting his turn to be asked and said that he was being rude by ‘jumping the queue’, so to speak. Others have gone even further and cheered Trump’s action, seeing it as demonstrating Trump’s toughness and symbolic of how Trump would throw people out of the country.
In an interview, Ramos explains the back story, that Trump has been refusing to engage with him for a long time. I can well understand that Ramos felt that Trump would never call on him voluntarily and that he had to do what he did.
I and my team reached out to him all the ordinary ways. We put in I-don’t-know-how-many requests. That didn’t work. Then we were told not to try again by someone in the campaign. That person said very clearly he wasn’t going to talk to us. So I tried sending him a hand-written personal note, and he published that on the Internet with my personal cellphone number.
…What happened is that the press conference started. Two reporters asked questions, and Trump talked. Now, I have been to thousands of press conferences, and sometimes you are called and sometimes it doesn’t happen. You have to get the person’s attention. I have followed many of Mr. Trump’s press conferences, and that’s the dynamic, always. You have to be assertive. So after two reporters asked their questions, I said I have a question on immigration and I stood. I started asking my questions, and in the middle of that Mr. Trump tried to stop me. He tried calling on someone else. He told me to sit down. He told me to “go back to Univision.” I told him that as a U.S. citizen and as a reporter, I have a right to ask a question. After a lot of back and forth, he signaled to his security team to throw me out.
You can be sure that Trump’s supporters will be delighted that their man put this uppity Mexican in his place. The unidentified man outside the room who told Ramos to “Get out of my country” (Ramos is a US citizen) was channeling the message that Trump is promulgating.
So here’s an interesting question for political junkies: What is the line of offensiveness, if any, towards any group that is not white, male, heterosexual, and Christian that Trump has to cross in order for his supporters to abandon him?
Uhm. There isn’t. A lot of them are supporting him precisely because of things like this. He could talk about throwing them into camps, it doesn’t matter. They want more racism, more sexism. That’s why they like him.
He is supposed to cross those lines for his supporters
If you have a line somewhere, he is supposed to cross it.
But it’s all he does.
That guy yelling “get out of my country” at Ramos doesn’t look like a ‘first peoples’ but maybe he is. Otherwise he’s just an earlier illegal immigrant.
doublereed: Exactly. They like what they call “straight talk”, what moral people call “racist speech revealing racist thoughts.” The only thing he could say to cause his followers to abandon him would be if someone were to clandestinely record him badmouthing his followers as the useful idiots they are. The ending of “A Face In the Crowd” springs to mind.
If you have a line somewhere, he is supposed to cross it.
Well, Bush was the deciderator. Trump’s the linecrosserator. Gotta stick with your core competencies.
I hope this signals the death of the republican party; certainly it’s winning them the hispanic vote. Everyone -- including republican strategists -- knows that gerrymandering isn’t going to work much longer and eventually angry white bros aren’t going to be the majority. What then, GOP?
What then, GOP?
One can but hope: R.I.P., GOP.
He could strangle a puppy or eat a baby at the next press conference, and it would be cheered by his supporters as straight talk and refusal to cave in to political correctness. But if he were ever to walk back any one of his statements, hesitate to reply, or show any sign of indecisiveness, he would be disowned the next minute, and they would expect the rest of us to forget he ever existed.
I think the line he’d have to cross isn’t external but internal. As jws1 mentioned an attack on his people would work. I think so would anything that divided them. If they started seeing people they thought were “on their side” of these issues pop up as a despised group, that would cause fractures which would cause self-examination which would be the end of the entertainment segment of the “GOP primary race” show.
I haven’t tracked him much personally but when the reporting about him shows a clip he always seems to do this questioning follow-up. It’s partly to deflect criticism but I think it also functions as a point of self-insertion for his supporters into the insult spree. It allows them to claim it. If he started sounding certain about all this stuff then it would just be him making statements. I don’t think that would end well for him.
“Waiting your turn” is for losers.
“Get out of my country”
“Actually, this is my country. If you don’t want to share it with me, maybe you should leave.”
Ramos, a reputable journalist, goes to an official campaign press conference where Donald Chump claims to be ready and willing to answer questions about the dead animal on his head. Ramos is violently removed and called “disruptive”.
Meanwhile, Fox Nuisance practices ambush “journalism”, stalking people who are not at press conference, and sticking microphones and cameras in their faces when they are not prepared or willing to answer questions. Fox Nuisance calls it “investigative journalism” and those who don’t answer are “running away” or “aggressive” for asking trespassers to leave private property or attempting to go about their business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FQ-V1Tj2As
http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-oreilly-bernie-goldberg-jesse-watters-video-2011-3
The message is clear: “It’s okay when WE do it, not when you do it.”
It brings new meaning to the comeback, “What do you mean ‘we’, white man?”
What could you do to a black or brown person to disgust a neo-nazi? Embrace them.
Some of the support would probably melt away if Trump himself did something like murdered a Mexican child on camera. But not all of the support.
Holy crap, leftover, are you going to make me defend Fox News? Putting aside who they tend to go after and why, only talking to people at press conferences where they control the setting and who gets called on is more deserving of the scare quotes around “journalism” than going at them outside of press conferences.
@11 leftover1under
It’s less about Fox News in particular and also about who’s in power. Most of mainstream news criticized Ramos for practicing journalism. The reason is that Ramos dared speak against someone like Trump.