In the middle of the election campaign, Former President Donald Trump announced the “Latinos Americans for Trump” coalitionmade up of members of Latino communities in the United States, such as Republican senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and the congressman Carlos Gimenez. The group, according to a statement, is made up of leaders in business, education, sports, religion, communications and elected officials, who will “work tirelessly” to spread Trump’s messages “of a strong economy, lower prices, a secure border and peace through force, at home and abroad.”
When Trump announced his first campaign in 2016, he did so with insults to Mexico claiming that he sent “drugs” and “rapists” to the United States. This year, in his third presidential campaign, he compared immigrants to the character Hannibal Lecter, the murderer in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). Comments of this style caused, in the 2020 elections, the majority of counties with a large Latino population to vote for the Democratic party.
However, in some key states such as Texas and Florida, Republicans registered a significant increase in votes in 2020 and, at the federal level, the percentage of Latinos who supported Trump was 38 percent, 10 points more than in 2016 according to the Center from Pew Research. “In 2024 we will win an even greater proportion of the Hispanic American votesetting all-time records for Republicans everywhere on the ballot,” he said. trump in the statement.
Rubio, a senator from Florida, explained in the same text that the former Republican president “understands the challenges that Hispanic Americans face” under the Biden government. “Growing up in a Cuban home taught me the importance of family, faith and the value of honest work. Under President Trump, Hispanics experienced the lowest unemployment rate in history, their small businesses prospered, prices were low and jobs were plentiful,” explained Cruz, a senator from Texas.
