Latinos In The 3rd Trump Cycle
I talk with Julio Ricardo Varela about the Presidential candidates, and the communities caught between them
Below you’ll find edited excerpts of an interview I conducted with journalist Julio Ricardo Varela, founder of the new Latino Newsletter and an MSNBC columnist.
This is the latest of my series of conversations looking into the state of race relations in this presidential election year. Earlier I spoke with DEI consultant Malia Lazu and Diana Hwang of the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative.
Bernstein: This is now the third Trump Presidential campaign; how does this one feel compared with the others?
Varela: In 2015 there was a sense of shock. That first campaign speech, when he went down the escalator and gave that now infamous speech about Mexicans bringing crime, that was a moment in modern-day American political history. There were several Latino and Latina journalists, not just myself, saying “what's coming out of this candidate’s mouth is pretty dangerous.” Then in the second campaign, in the 2020 cycle with George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter, and all that happened during the pandemic, anyone who tried to put a human face on the Latino community was seen as “woke.” And now, we have these two camps: people who think demographic change is good for this country, and those who think demographic change is scary. And that's an American tradition that Trump tapped into.
Bernstein: In 2020, because he was running for reelection, it seemed to me that Trump couldn't really lean as hard on the message of brown people destroying the country—because it was his country at that point. But now this year, because the message again is that the incumbent is ruining America, they're scouring the country for any crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.
Varela: Right, exactly. Now they’re saying that every migrant in the world is committing violent crime. There's a great new book, Welcome the Wretched by Cesár Garcia Hernández, in defense of the quote-unquote “criminal alien.” He gives a concise history of immigration in the United States, and how racialized it was. He makes a really interesting point, which I feel like progressive Democratic circles aren’t understanding: people are people, none of us are perfect, we've all done things that because we've been privileged, or in a private space, there are no consequences—while for others, their future is done, that’s it. But it's so much easier to think that this person is evil; that he's hanging out with Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter, poisoning the blood, migrant fight club—Trump says these stupid, xenophobic things, and the country's like, “Yeah, whatever.”
Bernstein: I think for many of us outside of the community, it can be hard to understand how any Latinos can support someone who says those things.
Varela: When I started covering Latino supporters of Trump, I was talking to first generation immigrants, who believe in the American dream. They’re fleeing poverty and violence, and see a beacon here. It boils down to a vision of the United States right now, and Trump’s vision is standard. There are plenty of Latinos—I grew up among many of them—who want to prove themselves to be part of the United States experiment. The part I struggle with is someone like Marco Rubio, who was on Telemundo recently saying that Trump didn’t mean “poisoning the blood of the country” to be racial or ethnic. Really?
Bernstein: Biden recently came out with a plan to provide a path to legal status for spouses, shortly after his executive order limiting the number of asylum seekers. You’ve written about how Republicans try to split Latino Americans into good Latinos and bad Latinos—is Biden doing something similar, saying the ones who have been here and got married and haven't made trouble, they're the good ones; the ones fleeing other countries now trying to come here, they’re the bad ones we don't want?
Varela: Yeah. If you remember, there was the Obama thing: we’re going after felons, not families. In 2012, when Biden was the vice president, there were a lot of protests calling Obama the deporter-in-chief. And then DACA happens, and Obama gets 70 percent of the Latino vote. I think the Biden campaign learned, after the asylum ban order, that a core part of his coalition were saying: “you're acting like Trump.” Whatever you say about Joe Biden, the executive order was the boldest move he ever made on immigration. That was taken from the Obama playbook. Now, the economy was in a better state back then; Biden is going to have issues with the economy, with Latinos. But whether you agree with that strategy or not, I think that's the strategy.
Bernstein: Is it an effective strategy?
Varela: That's always been the tension in communities: I'm doing it the right way, they're not. That’s a classic immigrant community pattern. I can talk about Italian immigrant communities, Irish immigrant communities. So politically you're right, this is about belonging, and identity, and who gets to call yourself an American. It's a very messy conversation. We’re a big electorate, but we're still kind of figuring ourselves out. You have to look at this from a classic immigration model: as you get into third, fourth, fifth generation, you’re going to get plenty of people with Latino surnames who just think of themselves as from the US.
Bernstein: Which is why, as you’ve written, the Trump campaign recently rebranded “Latinos for Trump” to “Latino Americans for Trump.”
Varela: For what the Republicans need to do, it was a very smart move politically. They don't need 66 percent of the Latino vote--they just need 35. To get 35, they just need to get the people that agree with them. The Latino community is ideologically diverse; there has always been a traditional conservative sector that probably represents a third of the electorate.
Bernstein: But you’re not seeing a significant party realignment.
Varela: Historically, the data has always said it’s 66 percent Democrat, 33 percent Republican, give or take a couple of percentage points. Trump has done better with Latino men in the last couple of cycles, but the vast majority of people in our community believe that Democrats best represent them. In 2008, Obama captivated a lot of young Latino voters, with promises of comprehensive immigration reform. It didn't happen. A movement started with these undocumented youth activists, and now they're at tables of power in DC in 2024. And the other thing is, the Latino communities are more working class. Republicans do a really good job pushing the message that Democrats are out of touch elites.
Bernstein: How can that change?
Varela: The polling says Latinos are a lot of like the rest of mainstream American voters: it’s the economy, pocketbook issues, and they don't care about immigration. But I think that's too simplistic. Immigration is part of the community. Mixed-status families are common, so when President Biden says we're finally going to give a pathway to legal status for undocumented spouses of American citizens, I don't think people understand the power that has.
Bernstein: You mentioned up front about being on the wrong side of anti-“woke” resentments. Is there also a sense in which a lot of Latino Americans themselves are looking at Black Americans and saying, “They're getting the opportunities we should get”?
Varela: That’s classic divide-and-conquer. Trump clearly is making that a strategy. He gets up in front of Black audiences and says, “the quote-unquote “illegals” are taking your jobs.” It plays into some really sad divisions—some of which have been manufactured by federal government policies. Look at what happened to Jamaal Bowman. For a society to progress you're always going to go two steps ahead and one step back. We're in this whiplash stage. Republicans want to pit black voters against Latino voters; it's classic strategy to take two groups that are not doing the best and pit them against each other. The thing that gives me hope is that younger people are way more attuned to these issues. They see a more diverse America, and they don't get scared. This generation has already been through a pandemic, and growing up with climate change, and my kids grew up with a recession—my daughter was six in 2008 when I lost my job. The 9/11 generation has seen a lot growing up in the internet age, living on screens. Also, Latinos don't have political power yet. Name me a national political voice, that is getting attention. Maybe AOC? Maybe Marco Rubio? So we're just at the beginning of the revolution for Latino political power.
Bernstein: I want to ask you about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s potential to win votes with Latino Americans. I remember that when Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama against Hillary Clinton in 2008, one reason the Obama camp was so excited was that he was such a powerful voice among Latinos. And they sent him out immediately to campaign and record robocalls for Latinos.
Varela: Yes, in his broken, Boston-accented Spanish! And John F. Kennedy with Latinos for Kennedy, that was a big thing back then. To Hispanics, he was like a god in a lot of places, except for maybe southern Florida. And RFK with César Chávez. The Kennedy name is still the Kennedy name. I do think there's something there. But, I don’t think Robert Kennedy Jr. is really running a great campaign. Does he have some appeal in places like Nevada and Arizona, with Latinos who might want to vote for him as opposed to Biden? Yeah. Look at the polling with young Latinos: they're not tied to institutional parties; they're independent.