President Trump is no Friend of Latin Americans

Before mismanaging and then ignoring a pandemic which hits Black and Latino Americans especially hard, president Trump ignored the aftermath of Hurricane Maria which hit Black and Latin Americans especially hard. Do we see a pattern here? According to Miles Taylor, Trump’s former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff, president Trump asked if he could swap Puerto Rico for Greenland because “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.” It was no joke.

President Trump claimed credit for record low Black and Latino unemployment. But the truth is that Latino unemployment fell for a number of reasons completely unrelated to President Trump’s economic and diplomatic policies such as:

• The inherited strong economy. The trend goes back to 2008. It will end soon if Trump stumbles into a war or can’t get out of the trade wars he started against Europe, China, Mexico, Canada and Japan.
• Relatively young Latino population (61% under 35) replaces white baby boomers (59% over 36) as they retire. (Source, Pew Research)
• Many volunteer or were forced to serve in the military due to George W. Bush’s long recession and remain there due to George W. Bush’s long wars. (By July 4, 2019 Bush’s Afghan war will have lasted longer than the Revolutionary war, Civil War, WWI and WWII combined.)

According to the Council on Forign Relations (CFR) report on demographics in the U.S. military: “Among enlisted recruits, 43 percent of men and 56 percent of women are Hispanic or a racial minority.”

If President Trump is too weak to keep us out of war with Iran and/or North Korea — it will go on for a decade or more and many who serve will be the Puerto Ricans and other Latinos he insulted in order to win his election. He is no friend of Latinos.

• 1970s racial redlining (Trump’s inheritance, “a small loan of a million dollars” came from Old Man Trump’s racial redlining at a time when almost all VA loans from returning WW-II veterans went to whites only.)
• In 1999 when Fidel Castro sent his assassins to kill Cuban exiles in Miami, Donald Trump violated the Cuban embargo by sending investment advisors to Havana (disguised as a Catholic charity) to investigate property for a Trump golf resort. You don’t know about this story because it came out at the same time as Russia dumped Hillary’s emails. Trump’s re-imposing the embargo will help his timed property development whenever he leaves office. This election decides whether he builds Trump tower Moscow and Trump resort Havana in 2021 or 2025.
• Insulting the mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico as she stood in sewage after hurricane Maria and then ignoring the plight of Puerto Ricans who went 11 months without electricity, refrigerated food/medicine, clean water, sewer, emergency services and then denying the resulting 3057 U.S. citizen deaths.
• According to Miles Taylor who worked in President Trump’s Department of Home Land security at the time, Trump “joked” about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland because “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.” But it was no joke.
• Pardoning Arpaio (The Arizona Sheriff who would arrest and lock up U.S. citizens because of their accent and the color of their skin fit his racist profile of “an illegal.”)
• Hiring and supporting other racists such as Steven Miller.
• Policies for disenfranchising Latino voters
• Pushed for census citizenship question deliberately to suppress Latino district representation in Congress and electoral college.
• President Trump’s policies have encouraged appalling treatment of Latino families in ICE detention centers which he extra-judicially labels as “illegals and MS-13” in order to Trump up support for his wall.
• Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chief and as incoming president his top advisor was Steve Bannon, who scapegoated Latinos in order to steal retirement funds and savings from Republicans with a fraudulent “WeBuildTheWall” campaign.
• Donald Trump has very few Latinos on his cabinet. Irish, German and other northern European wealthy white males are overwhelmingly over-represented on his staff.
• One of Donald Trump’s first acts as presidents was to remove the Spanish language version of the official Whitehouse website which had been maintained by Obama and Bush. After replacing it with a (illegal use of federal resources) campaign page for a couple of days, he took it down. It was never replaced: https://web.archive.org/…//www.whitehouse.gov/espanol