ANALYSIS — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday hopped from topic to topic during a roundtable with Latino voters — but said little about how he would help the growing voting bloc.
Trump took questions from Latino voters at the event in Miami, which was rescheduled earlier this month due to Hurricane Milton. His campaign aides say he can grow his support among the important bloc. At the roundtable, he answered questions generically and repeated campaign rally lines.
When actor Eduardo Verástegui recounted his personal story and talked about what Trump, during his term in office, did to help Latino Americans, the former president claimed there were 325,000 missing Latino children, blaming the Biden-Harris administration. Then he veered off, contending Israeli war plans had been leaked and calling his general election foe, Vice President Kamala Harris, a “stupid person.”
From there, he noted a large Border Patrol union had endorsed him and criticized the situation at the southern border and illegal immigration rates. By the end of his response to Verástegui, Trump was ranting about transgender athletes playing women’s sports, saying to applause: “On day one, I’m going to end it.”
The numbers
A national New York Times-Siena College poll of 902 likely Latino voters conducted Sept. 29-Oct. 6 found the community split on “deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally,” as Trump has proposed: 48 percent were opposed, 46 percent were in support.
President Joe Biden won the nationwide Latino vote in 2020, netting 66 percent of those voters — but Trump grew his Latino support to 32 percent, up from 29 percent in 2016. The last Democratic nominee to receive less than 60 percent of Latino voters was John Kerry, who lost to then-President George W. Bush, in 2004. Head-to-head with Trump, Harris netted 56 percent of the bloc in the Times-Siena College poll, while Trump got 37 percent. When other candidates were added, Harris dropped to 54 percent and Trump to 36 percent.
Her campaign signaled in a Tuesday statement that Latino men would be a big focus, saying she would announce proposals during a Telemundo interview to aid Latino men with job training, removing college degree requirements for some federal positions and providing small-business assistance, among other plans.
Her statement also announced a “media blitz” targeting Latino men that would “meet Latino men where they are … from a lowrider early vote event in Wisconsin to a horse parade early vote caravan in Las Vegas and food trucks in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada.”
Solar: ‘Rabbits get caught in it’
While Trump talked little about Latino voters, he did hit on some of his favorite topics: his opponents, diatribes about electric vehicles, solar-panel fields, California blackouts, the value of his properties in California, the southern border, the state of the economy, longtime “friends” — and more.
“I really think the biggest problem facing the country is what they’ve allowed on the border,” he said of the Biden-Harris administration. “They’re emptying out their jails in the Congo and they’re delivering them to the border. … If they get in, they’ll have open borders.”
Trump did not provide evidence to back up the Congo or other illegal migration-related claims. On his “open borders” line: Harris routinely speaks of his swooping in earlier this year to nix a bipartisan Senate border and immigration package that had the support of conservative senators like James Lankford of Oklahoma.
He also expressed concern for wild rabbits, a population he claimed were being ravaged by solar fields. “It’s all steel and glass and wires. It looks like hell. And you see rabbits get caught in it. … It’s just terrible.”
Congressional races: ‘Surprisingly good’
Trump, often flanked by Republican lawmakers, predicted the party could do very well in congressional races on Election Day.
“We could end up surprisingly good,” Trump said of GOP candidates. “I’m helping them all.”
The former president has done little to boost some longtime critics within the party, like former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is running for Senate in a competitive race.
Trump did direct jokes toward Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who joined several local GOP officials on stage with the party’s standard-bearer. “You say Harris. No one knows who she is,” Trump quipped. “Rick Scott doesn’t know who Harris is.”
538’s generic congressional ballot metric shows voters prefer Democrats in Congress by a slim 1.3 percentage point margin (46.9 percent to 45.7 percent).
Harris: ‘She’s lazy as hell’
The Republican nominee mocked Harris over her Tuesday schedule, which includes only an interview with Hallie Jackson to air on “NBC Nightly News.”
“I can’t get over it. Who the hell takes off, we have 14 days left,” he said of the remaining campaign calendar before saying to more applause: “You know why? She’s lazy as hell.” (Democrats last month made the same claim about him during a stretch when he was mostly off the campaign trail. On Monday, Harris did events in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.)
Trump contended Harris is “further left” than Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, among the most progressive senators. He also levied more personal attacks on Harris.
“She’s slow. Low IQ. Something. I don’t know what the hell it is,” the 78-year-old Trump said as some critics questioned his own cognitive abilities. “I don’t want to be nice about it because we can’t take a chance. … We can’t have another low-IQ person.”
A White House physician who recently released a medical report about the 60-year-old vice president’s health did not mention any cognitive issues. Trump has opted against releasing any recent medical records or reports.
At one point, Bob Unanue, president and CEO of Goya Foods, and several audience members deliberately mispronounced Harris’ first name as others laughed. Unanue is a founding board member of the America First Policy Institute.
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