OF COURSE: Jorge Ramos Fawned Over the Woke Bishop That Called Trump Out

January 31st, 2025 4:00 PM

Former Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was once considered the most influential among Spanish-speaking media figures in the United States, and was compared to Walter Cronkite. Ramos is of course gone from Univision but still chooses to opine on the issues of the day, even if his sway within the community these days is more comparable to shouting-in-the-void Keith Olbermann.

Ramos decamped to Substack after his defenestration from Univision, as appears to be the custom these days. His latest column is a paean to the woke bishop that did a performative chastisement of President Donald Trump at the prayer event subsequent to his inauguration.

Ramos knows a thing or two about performative confrontation. After all, he stage-managed the heckling then-Candidate Trump’s 2015 press conference in Iowa, which helped him briefly cross over into Resistance Media stardom:

PETER MANSBRIDGE, CBC: Why did you make the decision that you had to go to Iowa to confront Donald Trump?

JORGE RAMOS, UNIVISION: As you know, television… television doesn't happen. Television is produced. It is created. And, so we brought three cameras, we brought microphones, and our purpose was to talk to Donald Trump. And confront Donald Trump. That was the purpose. As a journalist.

MANSBRIDGE: A confrontation.

RAMOS: I wanted to ask him a question- many questions, but (...) yes, it was going to be a confrontation.

... 

MANSBRIDGE: You keep calling it questions, your “questions”, where in fact you didn’t ask a question. They’re statements, not questions.

MANSBRIDGE: You can not deport 11 million people

RAMOS: You can not deport 11 million… you can not deport 11 million people.

MANSBRIDGE: You can not deport 11 million… you can not deport 11 million people

RAMOS: You can not build a 1900-mile wall.

MANSBRIDGE: You can not deny citizenship to children in this country.

RAMOS: You can not deny citizenship to children in this country.

RAMOS: I confronted him on the fact that he wants to deport 11 million people, and build a wall, and deny citizenship.

RAMOS: We thought that in Dubuque, Iowa, there would be just a few journalists following the candidate. And we were right. So we showed up like two hours before, we brought three cameras, and then we made a plan. I was going to be wearing a microphone so my voice would be at the exact same level as his when we start editing

DONALD TRUMP: No, you haven’t you haven’t been called.

RAMOS: I have… I have the right to ask a question. And this is...no. And this is the question. You can not deport 11 million… you can not deport 11 million people. You can not build a 1900-mile wall. You can not deny citizenship to children in this country.

RAMOS: Then we had the three cameras well-positioned, the lighting was right, and then I made a plan. (...) We planned everything.

RAMOS: TV, television doesn't happen. You create it. You produce it. It doesn't happen just like that. And that’s exactly what we did. (...) We NEEDED TO CONFRONT HIM.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN: You wanted to get into a fight with him and you got your fight.

RAMOS: We will be judged, as journalists, by how we responded to Donald Trump.

By this measure, response to Donald Trump, Bishop Budde passed with flying colors:

But more than anything, she is the only person in these days of parties, pardons, threats and vengeance who has dared to confront Donald Trump frontally. "I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now," she asked Trump, who moved uncomfortably in his seat and avoided making eye contact. "There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families who fear for their lives." That seemed aimed directly at Trump, who during his inaugural speech just hours before had declared that the official policy of his administration would be to recognize "only two genders, man and woman."

But Bishop Budde did not stop there. "The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals," the bishop told the president, without raising her voice but contradicting the Trump narrative since 2015. "I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that they will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here."

It has been almost a decade since Donald Trump went down the gilded staircase at his eponymous Tower, and Jorge Ramos is still trying to stick it to him any chance he can get. From reading the column one can glean that Ramos almost views the woke bishop as a proxy of sorts, delivering that should be his arguments during his performative confrontation of Trump.

The column winds down with Ramos’s own imagined wordy heckling on an entire array of issues beyond immigration, and with his trite accusation of anyone who disagrees with his screeds as a traitor:

His interventionist comments on Mexico, Panama, Canada and Greenland break all international rules. His pardons of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists at the Capitol open the doors to more political violence. His indifference to global warming puts the planet at risk. His order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organizations leaves us more vulnerable to another pandemic. His refusal to admit he lost the 2020 elections is a giant and dangerous disinformation campaign and a terrible example for authoritarian regimes. Taking away the citizenship of children born in the United States violates the constitution and more than 200 years of tradition. And his accumulation of power -- he controls the executive branch and Congress and a majority in the Supreme Court -- threatens US democracy.

The lesson provided by Bishop Budden is hard hitting. For religious people, journalists, politicians, human rights activists and advocates of cultural diversity, for defenders of the environment, and for so many others, to remain silent in the face of many of Trump's proposals is to betray themselves and betray those around them.

I am relieved to only have to read these words in a Substack article. A television interview between Ramos and Bishop Budde, who speaks fluent Spanish, would have been ten times as insufferable.