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On June 23rd, Donald Trump visited Arizona to celebrate the completion of two hundred miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. That the number of coronavirus cases in the state had reached an all-time high did not stop Trump from focussing on the structure, hailing it as great, powerful, and really foolproof. His visit to Arizona, a key battleground state in the 2020 election, gave him an opportunity to showcase a formidable campaign promise that he has neither fulfilled nor got Mexico to pay for. Before surveying the thirty-foot-tall fence in San Luis, where a silver plaque awaited his signature, Trump spoke at a border-security roundtable. He boasted of his success in preventing immigrants, drugs, crimes, and even the coronavirus from reaching the U.S.s southern border. For that, Trump had an unlikely ally to thank. I want to thank the President of Mexico, he said. Hes really a great guy. I think hell be coming into Washington pretty soon.

Two weeks later, President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador boarded a commercial flight en route to the U.S. capital. His decision to visit Trump in the midst of a pandemic and a fraught American election spurred criticism on both sides of the border. Many argued that Trump could reap political benefits from the meeting at a time when he is hoping to pull Latino voters away from Joe Biden, especially in battleground states he must win in 2020, such as Arizona, Florida, and Texas. While Trumps polling averages have plummeted among other groups, his support among Latinos has remained steady. He is still losing among these voters by a wide marginmore than thirty percentage pointsbut he also appears to be benefitting from Bidens inability to generate enthusiasm for his candidacy in the community. Recent polls show that less than sixty per cent of the Latino electorate would vote for Bidena far lower number than the seventy-one per cent who voted for Obama in 2012 and the sixty-six per cent who voted for Clinton in 2016.

During two tightly scripted public appearances, where no questions from the press were permitted, Lpez Obrador flaunted his friendship with Trump, showering him with adulation and praising his treatment of Mexico. Im here to express to the people of the United States that their President has behaved toward us with kindness and respect. He has treated us as we are: a dignified country, Lpez Obrador, who is commonly known by his initials, AMLO, said. He left Washington politically unscathed at home because Trump, in a rare display of discipline, made no virulent remarks against Mexico. Mexican-Americans uplift our communities, Trump declared. They strengthen our churches and enrich every feature of national life. They are hardworking, incredible people.

In Trumpian fashion, the President took full political advantage of the visit. Hours after the two leaders spoke in the Rose Garden, Trump tweeted a campaign-style video of Lpez Obrador hailing him and his record. Snippets from Trumps remarks, mixed with triumphant music, narrated the footage. Today we celebrate the historic victory we achieved together just days ago, when NAFTA was officially terminated and replaced with a brand-new, beautiful U.S.M.C.A., Trump says as a picture of the trade deal, featuring his signature in oversized letters, appears on the screen. Earlier in the day, when Biden reminded his followers on Twitter that Trump launched his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, the proxy account @EquipoTrump responded that Trump has actually delivered for our community. Thats why President Lpez Obrador said today that @realDonaldTrump has treated Mexicans with understanding and respect. Days later, Axios reported that the Trump campaign planned to spend millions on Spanish-language ads featuring Lpez Obradors remarks at the White House.

Equipo Trump is the official bilingual Twitter account of the Presidents relection campaign. In recent days, the account tweeted a warning in Spanish that a possible Joe Biden Vice-Presidential pick, Karen Bass, would adopt policies of appeasement toward the Venezuelan ruler, Nicols Maduro, and Cubas leader, Ral Castro. It also wished Peruvians a happy Independence Day. Unlike in 2016, the Trump campaign appears to be actively trying to expand Trumps base of support among Latinos. The effort is being shepherded by Vice-President Mike Pences nephew, John Pence, a corporate lawyer in his thirties who has said that he discovered the perils of socialism while studying abroad in Argentina and teaching English in Nicaragua. It has a Latino advisory board comprising twenty-two members, ranging from Hispanic business leaders to evangelical pastors. And, since the onset of the pandemic, the campaign has been holding frequent online events and sending out e-mails highlighting issues that appeal to conservative Hispanics, warning of The Radical Lefts desire to achieve unlimited abortions through Biden or its attempt to cancel Goya Foods.

Still, the campaign, in many respects, is closely following Trumps aggressive 2016 playbook. Last fall, when Biden launched an initiative called Todos con Biden (All with Biden), Trumps team rushed to buy the Web domain. To date, anyone visiting the site todosconbiden.com will find a photograph of the Vice-President looking downward, with his arms crossed, and an announcement, in both English and Spanish: Oops, Joe forgot about Latinos. A link at the bottom of the page, which reads Vamos (Lets Go), redirects visitors to the Latinos for Trump Web page. Weve seen that the Trump campaign has no compunction when it comes to weaponizing any statements of support for their own political purposes, Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told me. If the campaign thinks its enough to propel them to be able to win the Hispanic vote on the basis of AMLOs comments, theyre sorely mistaken. If their aim is to try to use these comments to increase support from Hispanic voters on the margins, it might very well have that effect.

Trump, though, also faces enormous political challenges in increasing his support among Latinos. His stance on immigration, and particularly his Administrations policy of separating migrant children from their families, is widely unpopular in the community. As the pandemic continues, Trumps claims of a thriving economy, which once resonated strongly among Latino men, are no longer crediblethe unemployment rate for Hispanics currently stands at more than sixteen per cent. Furthermore, Latinos have caught and died from the coronavirus at an outsized ratethe research group Latino Decisions recently reported that, in a majority of states, Hispanics are more than twice as likely as other Americans to contract the virus. All the while, the President has continued his long-running practice of making false claims about undocumented immigrants and playing on racial fears as a way to scare voters into supporting him. On June 28th, he tweeted, Corrupt Joe Biden has confirmed that he would give UNLIMITED Healthcare to Illegal Immigrants. This would break our system and bring millions of people to the USA.

To Trumps opponents, this all begs the question of why Lpez Obrador would allow himself to be so overtly used. After the Rose Garden address, Representative Ral Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and the son of a Mexican immigrant, derided Lpez Obrador as nothing more than Trumps collaborator. In 2018, Lpez Obrador ran for office on a pledge to counter Trumps vitriol and restore the dignity of Mexico. The previous year, within months of Trumps inauguration, he had filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in Washington, D.C., denouncing the Administrations border wall and its immigration policy. He also published a book, Oye, Trump (Listen Up, Trump), in which he declared that Trump and his advisers speak of Mexicans the way Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jews, just before undertaking the infamous persecution and the abominable extermination.

Read more from the original source:
Equipo Trump: The Presidents Brazen Attempt to Win Over Latino Voters - The New Yorker