Once again, Univision's Jorge Ramos goes to a favorite trope of his - suggesting that Hispanics who don't follow ideological suit are race-traitors.
In an effort to gain some traction among Texas' Hispanic voters, Univision's weekly Al Punto show booked Democrat Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in the 2018 midterm election. This exchange came three minutes into a six-minute interview, in which Jorge Ramos tries to speak his very deeply-held opinion, disguised as an oddly-framed question to O'Rourke:
JORGE RAMOS, HOST, AL PUNTO: You have challenged Senator Ted Cruz to six debates, two of them in Spanish. Senator Cruz, with a touch of humor, has said that it would be very boring because he doesn’t speak Spanish very well. But if you won’t be able to debate with Senator Cruz, my question is: Do you believe that Senator Ted Cruz has betrayed other Latinos...other Latinos like him?
CONGRESSMAN ROBERT “BETO” O’ROURKE (D-TX): First, I think that it is very important to listen to all the people in this state. We can’t serve or represent the people of Texas if we can’t listen in their language...in Spanish or in English. We are a state- we are a country of two languages. And we need to understand- it is important to also show the respect that each person deserves in this country.
RAMOS: The question is about Ted Cruz. Do you believe that Ted Cruz has betrayed Latinos?
O’ROURKE: For example, he wants to deport the Dreamers. He wants to build a wall that will cost $30 billion at a time when we have border security. I believe that he does not represent Latinos - the people of Texas.
If you watch closely, you can see Ramos's visible annoyance at having to repeat the question because O'Rourke botched the prompt the first time around. Ramos set the question up for a resounding "yes", but got a talking-point word salad instead. O’Rourke fumbled through his second attempt as well, and Ramos simply moved on to something else.
In the process, O’Rourke inadvertently blew up a favorite talking point of Univision and the rest of the grievance merchants on the left, which was carefully constructed to aid the ascension of previous Great Texas Hope Julián Castro - namely, that Hispanic politicians don’t have to be fully bilingual in order to represent the community. O’Rourke did this by going on about how one cannot represent Texans without the ability to “listen in their language”.
As for Ramos, we know that he believes Cruz (and Marco Rubio) to be race-traitors because he has explicitly said so in multiple opinion columns. In January of 2016, Ramos called Cruz and Rubio race-traitors. Four months later, he gloated at their presidential primary defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. And now, instead of saying what is so clearly present on his mind, he’s trying to turn a candidate to the United States Senate into his personal sock puppet.
Ted Cruz should be clear-headed about what an interview with Ramos might look like going forward.
Yesterday’s embarrassing exchange proves that Ramos, like the rest of Univision, is only interested in promoting a diversity that is skin-deep - and proof positive as to why Univision is sinking.
