The New Yorker Radio Hour - Why Are More Latino Voters Supporting Trump?

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Despite a surge of enthusiasm for Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign, the 2024 race remains extremely competitive. And one factor very much in Donald Trump’s favor is an increased share of support from Latino voters. Anti-immigrant messaging from Trump and the Republican Party has not turned off Latino voters; he won a higher percentage of Latino voters in 2020 than in 2016, and he was roughly tied with President Biden at the time Biden stepped out of the race in July. Geraldo Cadava, the author of “The Hispanic Republican,” wrote about the Republicans’ strategy for The New Yorker. He spoke with prominent Latino Trump supporters about why the message is resonating, and how they feel about all the signs reading “Mass Deportation Now.”Plus, it’s time for one of those annual rituals that keeps the world turning: picking the song of the summer. “One way of thinking about it is a song that you hear involuntarily,” Kelefa Sanneh opines. “This isn’t the song that you play the most. It’s the song you hear everyone else listening to.” He joins fellow staff writer Amanda Petrusich to propose four candidates for song of the summer: Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”; Charli XCX’s “360,” from the much-buzzed “BRAT” album; Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”; and Karol G’s “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido.” David Remnick weighs in to break the tie. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnant. With all the headlines about Kamala Harris's surging campaign and poll numbers that indicate a very real change is taking place, the 2024 race remains extremely close. Harris and Tim Walts can hardly expect to win a national election on vibes alone. Any Democrat or anyone really who. remembers 2016, will tell you that it would be kind of crazy to write off Donald Trump just yet. So today we're going to look at two critical aspects of the Republicans' race to reclaim the White House. Back in 2013, after Mitt Romney's loss to Barack Obama, a Republican autopsy of the campaign

said that Latino voters were being turned off by the party's hardline stance on immigration. The report said, if Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence. Well, that turned out to be wrong. Since 2015, Donald Trump has said any number of false, misleading, and racist things about people from Mexico and Central America. He put in place policies like child separation at the border. And yet, his share of the Latino vote increased in 2020. And the trend continues. Comparing Trump and Biden back in July,

Latino voters were split evenly. All of this was on Geraldo Cada's mind when he covered the Republican National Convention for the New Yorker. That sound you hear is Maracas for Trump. And people at this Hispanic Leadership Coalition event have been instructed to shake them on the convention floor tonight. This is a subject very close to Kadava's heart. He's the author of a book called The Hispanic Republican.

Jerry, there have been a lot of headlines about Donald Trump's support among Latino voters, that it's increasing. And that's a phenomenon that Democrats, a lot of them find utterly baffling. And we'll get to that. But before we get into the whys and House, what's the scale of this? What do we know about the numbers and how the vote has shifted over time? What we know for sure is that Donald Trump increased his share of Latino support between 2016 and 2020 by about eight points. That's the consensus view. And that was surprising to many because of everything that Donald Trump had said and done, especially in the arena of immigration, all of his anti-immigrant policies that were seen to be a real turnoff for Latinos. I think there's a real debate about how much Latinos are becoming conservative or whether that lower share of democratic support, had to do with Latino dissatisfaction with the candidates. Now, you went to talk to Latinos at the convention, the Republican convention in Milwaukee.

Now, these are not your average voters. They're very engaged political people. And some are truly ardent Trump supporters like a guy named Bob Unanway, who's the CEO of Goya Foods. Yes, Bob Yunanwe, President's CEO of Goya Foods. Why did you want to talk with him specifically? I wanted to talk to him specifically because, I wanted to ask him directly about his experience of giving that talk in the Rose Garden at the White House in the summer of 2020, because he said that we are blessed to have Donald Trump as our president. First of all, I never knew Donald Trump until July 9th, 2020. When I was in the Rose Garden, I was appointed by him to be a commissioner on the White House Commission on Hispanic Prosperity.

He was very concerned about prosperity for Americans and Hispanics. So he appointed a group of commissioners. After he said that we were blessed to have Donald Trump as a president, there were just widespread calls to boycott Goya beans. And I really thought that Democrats, by going down the rabbit hole of boycotting Goya, really took their eye off the ball. What the event at the White House was about was about Donald Trump announcing new initiatives, including investments in Hispanic serving institutions.

And those kinds of things are core elements of his appeal to Latinos. Meanwhile, Democrats just got carried away with this story about boycotting Goya Foods. When I said we were blessed, I'd hit home as a positive. Who were offended by that was Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, Julian Castro, Lin-Manuel Miranda, you know, the elites who are not, if he asked me, not truly Latino, because they have a privileged life. Whoa, he said that Castro and Lynn Manuel Miranda and AOC are not really Latino. Why not?

Yeah, I should first say that I'm not really comfortable with the language of who is and is not a real Latino. Because I think, you know, there are 65 million Latinos in the United States and all of them have different ways of relating to their Latino identity, whether it's about family traditions or language or music or anything like that. So I think that it doesn't make sense really to talk about who is or is not a real Latino. And it's something you see the Republican Party doing right now. You know, not too long ago, Donald Trump also said that Kamala Harris was Indian before she was black and she might not be a real black woman. And I think the Republican Party is trying to scramble our concepts about ethnic and racial identity.

This question about what people mean in the words they use came up in another country. that you had with a woman named Betty Cardenas. Now, tell us who she is before we listen to her. Yeah, I find Betty Cardenas fascinating. First of all, she's part of this kind of power family in Latino Republican politics because her son is named Abraham Enriquez, and he's the founder of a group called Bienvenito, U.S. But she has also served as national chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. And now she's also the president of the Bienvenitos action group. Let's listen to your conversation with her.

As you see Trump coming in, you see a message of more diverse, a little bit more inclusive in the platform. You even see it. I think there's still a lot of work to do within the Hispanic community. I mean, you see Trump, I think he will do a phenomenal, I hope he does a phenomenal job for the America First agenda that President Trump has, which, I'm a very much. America first means it has so much inclusivity and a lot of stuff. So, you know, I had never seen these signs.

I mean, I'd seen Build the Wall, things like that. I had never seen a sign that said mass deportation now. How do you feel about those signs? I can tell you, I mean, as a, you know, coming from immigrant parents, I think when you see mass deportation, like, I think you wouldn't, you won't see me raising one of those. Because there's so much significance behind there. And I know where Trump's policies stand.

I know the policy makers behind that are going to be behind. And I know what mass deportation he's talking about. He's talking about the criminals. You know, deport those high-risk criminals. And I think that's what's missing if they could specify. But also, I mean, it's a message of the campaign. I know in my heart what it means. I know who's going to be sitting down doing the policy.

So it doesn't. see it and I know it. It would be more like, oh, mass deportation, everybody, you know, even the students, the DACA students, everybody that here, I mean, it wouldn't be possible. And you and I know that. It's not true. Right. So here she gets to a very crucial slogan of the Trump campaign, mass deportation now,

which is a sign that you saw at the RNC quite a lot. And she says it just means deporting some criminals. How accurate is that where the Trump campaign? campaign is concerned. Well, I don't think it's very accurate if you take him at his word in terms of what he said publicly. I mean, they're talking about deporting 15 million to 20 million people, which he believes is the true number of undocumented immigrants in the United States. And it has echoes of 1954, right? What happened then? That's right. Well, it has echoes of 1954 when there was an operation called Operation Wetback that deported some, one,

1.3 million Mexicans from the United States. And now Stephen Miller and Trump together are calling for mass deportations. That would be something like 10 times that, more than 10 million, 12 million deportations. I got this a lot from a lot of different people, is that they think, first of all, that we are taking Trump's comments out of context. That what he really means is he's not talking about all Mexicans. He's only talking about high risk, high threat criminals. And if you think about it, that's not all that different than what Obama was advocating to when he talked about like selective prosecution. He was going to go for the criminals. He wasn't going to prosecute the people who had been here for a long time and were just trying to make a better lives for themselves. So when it gets down to it, I don't know that her vision of how

this is going to work and Obamas are all that different. But she says that she has been in rooms with Donald Trump where he has talked to her about his views of immigration, and she knows that mass deportation is not in his heart. It's not what he means. And she even brought out her phone. She had captured screenshots of old tweets that Donald Trump had sent that were in support of the dreamers. And she thinks that Donald Trump would still like to find a pathway for undocumented citizens, including dreamers. He would still like to fix things for them. it's striking, it's striking that she mentions the word diversity and inclusiveness as aspects of the Republican Party. Those are usually Democratic Party buzzwords. And I almost wondered if she were

trolling you in a way, although she doesn't seem to have that kind of personality. She means something different? Yeah. I mean, I think that that's what all, you know, not only Latinos, but I saw many Asian American Trump supporters, many black Trump supporters, Native American Trump supporters there. They really want to believe that because the Republican Party aligns with their values, that it is a truly inclusive message. And in fact, they will say that Democrats are the ones that like to kind of divide and conquer all Americans by appealing to particular ethnic groups, by having messaging that appeals to, you know, divides up the electorate and sees us all as a compilation of various interest groups. So I think she thinks that her message,

the Republican message is more kind of all-encompassing and all-American. Jerry, you also talk with Carlos Trujillo, who's a former ambassador to the OAS, the organization of American states. What was his role in the campaign and at the convention? He is now part of the campaign working as the Latino Americans for Trump organization, which kind of replaced in name, at least, the Latinos for Trump group. Let's hear some of your conversation with him. A lot of it's driven by the policy. And if you look at the gains with President Trump in the Hispanic community,

and I think one of the better examples, not the unique one, is Mammy Dade County. 2016, President Trump received about 34, 35 percent of Dade County, 40s, 2020, Governor Ron DeSantis, one-date County. And I'm willing to predict in 2024, President Trump will win date county. One of the largest Hispanic counties in the entire country, obviously in the state of Florida. I think it's a signal of what's happened with the Hispanic community that before was in the 20, lower 20% participating in the Republican Party to now it's one of the fastest growing blocks of Republican votes. I've spent a considerable amount of time talking to leaders of the Latinos con Biden campaign. And, you know, they talk a lot about how they're doing everything they can because they've heard loud and clear this idea that the Democratic Party takes Latinos for granted.

you can't just show up two or three months before an election and expect people to turn out for you. So they've talked a lot about how they've been spending millions of dollars on bilingual ad buys. They have been opening community centers. And the people I've talked to have said, by contrast, the Trump campaign is doing absolutely nothing. So I would like to hear you talk about that characterization, but also tell me a little bit about if that's kind of what they see as the invisibility of a campaign is actually part of the strategy? Well, the campaign is a policy. And I think there's a clear distinction between the Trump policy from 2016 to 2020 to the Biden policy. For the Hispanic community, the big issues are always

faith, family, and freedom, economic freedom, individual freedom, the incorporation of faith, which is very, very important, and the incorporation of family. And there are issues that Democrats strongly struggle with. The collapsed border that they think helps them with Hispanics does not. It actually hurts them. Their policy just across the entire Western Hemisphere has been disastrous. And for a lot of Hispanics, especially first generation, second generations, those foreign policy issues almost become domestic in nature. It doesn't matter how many community centers they build or how many cutting-edge ads, policy is what people are going to vote for. But if you look at the amount of people born in Latin America who are now United States

citizens voting in this upcoming election, it's very, very significant. And I think the majority of the gains that Republicans have made have really been with that population. I'm sure you got to get this all the time. But from the moment he declared his candidacy, Donald Trump was supposed to be toxic to Latinos because of statements he makes about Mexican immigrants and immigration in general. In 2016, the focus was on Mexicans who are rapists, murderers, and thieves. And then by 2020, it was about kids in cages. Now it's about immigrants poisoning the blood of America. Yeah. So if you look at illegal migration now, 2024, things that President Trump warned of in 2016 have become reality, right? American cities are less safe. There's a lot of crime being committed by illegal immigrants.

This last wave of migration are the opportunists. It's not the traditional immigrant who was looking for economic opportunity. And the majority of people are great people. They love America. they're looking for economic opportunity, and you really, you're sympathetic towards them, right, towards their flight of trying to improve their family. But at the same time, you have to take into account the country safety and the security. At the end of the day,

people don't vote for the collective, they vote for the individual, right? And when your economic policies is benefiting you personally, inflation's low, taxes are low, regulations are low, you're making more money. You tend to be a lot happier. And people vote for safety. They vote for security,

and they vote for freedom. Now, Jerry, Carlos Trujillo is used, some talking points about immigrants and crime that are, in fact, misleading. But he also says that Trump's Latino support is concentrated among more recent immigrants. Is that right? And why would that be? That was one of the most surprising things that Carlos Trujillo had told me, because I think the common knowledge had been that Trump's greatest gains would have been among, like, third or fourth generation Latinos who are more acculturated, speak less Spanish. But, you know, this fact, to this interesting fact about Trump increasing his support among first generation Latinos was

confirmed to me by this political scientist at Emory University named Bernard Fragha, who's been working on this. And he found that indeed it is true that that was one of Trump's greatest areas of gain. Jerry, something very important happened since the Republican National Convention, of course. And that is the head of the Democratic ticket has changed from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. What difference do you suppose that might be? make in this crucial vote? I think the enthusiasm that we've seen among Latinos is not unlike the enthusiasm we've seen among all Democrats right now.

And I think, you know, Voto Latino, the kind of biggest voter registration and turnout operation on the Democratic side has reported kind of record registration since Kamala Harris declared her candidacy, something that the president of the organization told me that they never even saw during the Obama or Clinton years. And so there's certainly a lot of enthusiasm. And it's especially noticeable among Latinas and young Latinos. And, you know, the main question, I think, going forward is whether they're actually going to turn out, usually about 50, 55 percent of Latinos show up. So there's a real question. You know, I think for me, the thing I've been thinking about is it feels like almost like the turning on.

of a light switch. Like, it was an on-off thing. There was a lack of enthusiasm, and now there's a burst of enthusiasm. So it's raised real questions about whether the problem is just fixed or whether structurally all of the problems that Democrats had been having engaging Latino voters still exist and will have to be worked through over the next few months. For a long time, there's been this idea floating around that when white people in the United States become a minority, which will happen in around 20 years, according to most projections, when that happens, the Democratic Party will triumph simply through the force of demographics. Do you want to lay that idea to rest here?

I've wanted to lay that idea to rest for a long time, especially it's ridiculous. And it's condescending. It's certainly condescending to think that it plays into that idea that Democrats take Latinos for granted. Which they have for years and years. Which they have for years. They were a core part of the Democratic coalition. You know, I've talked with so many Democratic strategists about this. And the best they can say, I think, is that they are afraid of the idea that Latinos will be seen as anything other than an important part of the coalition. Because if the Democratic Party takes from all of these recent changes, that the Latino vote is up for grabs, then Latino advocates lose their ability to make a strong case for, you know,

immigration policy or any of the issues that they have been fighting for for a long time, because if Latinos themselves are more fractured as a population than the Democratic Party has been told they are, then they'll have no power. It's like power in numbers, right? Jerry, thanks so much. Thank you, David. Geraldo Kada is a contributing writer for the New Yorker, and you can read him on the election, the migrant crisis, and much more at New Yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and it is time for the annual ritual of summer

that keeps the world turning on its axis, picking the song of the summer. And you're going to be relieved to know that I don't make this choice myself. I have rankled two of the New Yorkers great music critics, Amanda Petrusich and Kellefasana. Amanda, what is the song of the summer even mean? We never say Song of the Winter, Song of the Fall. Right. Yeah, it's a great question. I think it is not so much a qualitative judgment as simply

whatever jam is the most ubiquitous. What is the song that you kind of hear pumping out of cars with their windows down as they drive by? Also, what is the song that maybe encapsulates in a certain way? I don't know, a feeling of freedom and fun

and looseness and So it's not a commercial thing. It's not a, It's not what sells the most. No, I don't think so. I mean, there's this idea that diseases spread more in the winter, not because of the cold, but because we're all indoors sharing germs. And so maybe with songs, it's like the opposite. Maybe songs spread a little more during the summer

because we're all together, the windows are open. The song of the summer, one way of thinking about it is a song that you hear involuntarily, right? This isn't the song that you play the most. It's the song you hear everyone else listening to. So this is the epidemiological theory of music. Yes. Now, Kay, why don't you start us off? What's your big candidate?

Well, one candidate I think we have to talk about is Shibuzi. He's an interesting guy. He's the child of Nigerian immigrants. And he was on the Beyonce album earlier this year, which was like sort of a country album. But he has a bona fide country hit this summer, a song called A Bar Song, Tipsy. It's become a huge pop hit, but also a huge country hit. As we speak, it is the reigning three-week-long champion on the country airplay chart, the most played song on country radio.

And so there's been a lot of talk about, oh, is country radio going to play Beyonce? And it's funny that the answer to that question is, well, no, but it'll play her Nigerian-American collaborator Shibuzi, who's at the top of the chart. He comes a two to the three to the four. When it slays call and it kick us out the door. His skin kind of late, but the ladies want some more.

Oh, my good Lord. Tell him drink some. Because I'm going to put me up a double shit. Fantastic. And like, you know one thing the song of the summer might be is a song that sounds maybe a little bit like a novelty song. We don't know, but it's a guy that most people hadn't heard of before. It's a remake of an older hit. And so we don't know what the future may hold, but for this moment, this is like Shiboozy Summer, maybe.

You think he's got a future? I'm terrible at predicting that. If I was good at predicting that, to be frank with you, David, I would quit this job and get a much better paying job. Amanda, what do you think of Shibusi, not Kay's comment on the pay business? Right, yeah, the future of Shibuzi. Well, first of all, I will say it's such a K-pick. It makes no sense on paper, but is nonetheless sort of intoxicating. I mean, I am feeling a little one-hit wonder from Shibusi.

Maybe it's the sort of synchronicity of the fact that he's not. name has the word boozy in it and the song is about getting twisted. But it's a, it's a really fun summer song. I do like it. Amanda, now, your turn. What's your choice for the summer? What lit you up? So my first pick is Sabrina Carpenter's espresso. Sabrina Carpenter, 25-year-old former Disney Channel star. It's got this really rubbery, kind of buoyant, it tallow disco melody, but I think it's Song of the Summer material, because it's funny. The lyrics are incredibly playful and bizarre, and they work out of context in a really cool way,

which is, I think, increasingly essential in our sort of meme-hungry world. We've got Kay dancing in the studio today, so you're obviously not against this choice. No, I'm a big fan of Sabrina Carpenter, also a big fan of coffee. I'm going to be bold and say, that's that me espresso,

is actually an astounding feat of lyricism. I mean, she's essentially saying, I am so adorable and so enchanting and so desirable, you will never sleep again. I know I'm Mountain Do It for you. I'm sorry, but that is a perfect pop lyric. It pretty much is. I think even the moment in the chorus

where she says, isn't that sweet, I guess so is so great. I think the I guess so there is just absolutely skewering stone cold. She could take it or leave it, and who doesn't want to bring that kind of energy into their summer? Okay, you get another shot, a second choice. Here's a song that I haven't seen on a ton of song of the summer lists, but I think it deserves a spot. Carol G., the Colombian pop star, who's one of the biggest recording artists in the hemisphere, has a song called Sientes to Obrero Conocido, which is basically if I had met you before. This song has more of a Dominican Republic feel.

It's kind of a meringue with a little bit of Mambo, and it's a... been stuck in my head for much of the summer, and I think that's one pretty good requirement for a song of the summer. We got a little shimmy out of you on that one, David. You did. I love to see that. And Amanda's heads bopped on a long show. She's not objecting too hard.

No, not at all. Kay actually turned me on to the song. I think it is a total jam. It's a little bit reminiscent of Despecha, the Rosalia song, two years ago, which was a similar kind of like Marenga crossover move. But yeah, I think,

and it's had a huge audience, It's one of the biggest Latin songs of the year. And, you know, the story of American music increasingly is the story of Latin music. And so I think this deserves a place in any discussion of song of the summer. Amanda, you got a second choice? My second pick is Charlie XX's 360, which was the second single from Brat, her new record. Yeah, 360. When you're in my memory, how you see?

I'm so Julia. The princess street. I'm so Julia. So Charlie XXX is a little bit. a British hyper pop singer. She's been making music for over a decade. And as a cultural object, I think Brat might be her masterwork. So hyperpop is sort of almost exactly what it sounds like, a subgenre of pop that's very synthy, very compressed, very self-referential, sort of winking, short songs, big hooks. I mean, Brat, the record as a lifestyle, as a mood, as a vibe,

just felt to me genuinely inescapable this summer. 360, I think, is the best. song on the album. For me, the most fun part about it is that I could not even begin to truly define the brat aesthetic in any kind of useful or legible way. I think the whole thing is, you know, if you know, you know. Or as Charlie herself would say, I'm your favorite reference, baby. Kay, how are you feeling about the brat aesthetic this summer? I couldn't love it more, but it's also an interesting example of how there are different types of popularity. If you go by the numbers, streaming numbers, whatever, this is the least popular of the four songs that we've talked about today.

Yeah. But in terms of the discourse and maybe the discourse among people like us, it's totally inescapable. Because it's entered the post-Biden Kamala Harris moment. What she does is very cerebral, right?

She's making pop music that's kind of about pop. There's this moment in the song where she sings, I'm so Julia, which is a reference to Julia Fox, we think. But then Julia Louis Dreyfus makes his TikTok video where she's singing along to that part.

So the Charlie World is just super fun. Everybody's in on it. Okay, now we come to the decisive, crucial moment. We have four songs out on the table. Amanda, what's your choice for song of the summer? I think there's no escaping it. We're living in Brat Summer. I'm sorry. You know, Charlie famously tweeted Kamala as Brat, which then, that was the moment for me where I think I thought, this is it. This is the jam of 2024. That, to me, supersedes, you know, wherever she landed on the charts. That is the kind of cultural enormity that, to me, is Song of the Summer. Sir? I'm not sure that political co-optation

helps or hurts a case for Song of the Summer. You know, it's funny, like, the Song of the Summer, there's this idea that it's become somehow a more prestigious category, and as someone who has mixed feelings

about prestige, I got to go with Shibuzi. I have to say, I mean, I don't want to break your heart. I really don't. But the Shibuzi song is so out of left field. It's such a genre breaker.

It's fantastic. And it was the most surprising song to me, and I kind of love it. As goes David Remnick, so goes the nation. Oh, Lord. Shibusi Summer. Shibusi Summer. Amanda Petrusich,

Kelifassane, pleasure as always. You got work to do. Thank you. Back to your desk. See you next summer. All right. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

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