If you need more evidence that Donald Trump will hurt Republicans' chances of wooing Hispanic voters, just look at the Republican National Committee's troubles filling its position for a director of Hispanic communications.
Last week, Ruth Guerra, the former director of Hispanic communications, left the job. According to the Washington Post, she did so because of Trump: Being paid to support a candidate who regularly attacks Hispanic people was just too much.
The RNC quickly replaced Guerra with Helen Aguirre Ferré, who previously worked for Univision and advised Jeb Bush's presidential campaign.
So far, so good? Nope. Apparently, Aguirre Ferré has had quite a few negative things to say about Trump in past appearances on Spanish media. Here are some of her remarks, based on a Media Matters video, translated to English from Spanish:
- "Donald Trump is going to have a categorical problem in any election. He's been so vulgar with Hispanic and female voters that it impedes his ability to grow."
- "Donald Trump does damage to the country."
- "He's quarrelsome, kind of like a street dog. It's a very curious thing."
- "Donald Trump not only has said this [previous remarks about abortion], which troubles or upsets female voters, he's also said things against female journalists, like Megyn Kelly of Fox News, [and] what he's said about Mexicans and Hispanic women, particularly."
- "I think we can see a pattern in Donald Trump that's anti-women, that he's a person that really, I'm not going to tell you it's misogyny in itself, but I do think … that he's uncomfortable with a strong, independent woman."
- "For me, Donald Trump doesn't represent the Republican Party. Donald Trump wasn't Republican until very recently. He was a Democrat for all his life."
Really, Aguirre Ferré just represents the Republican Party's new reality. Trump, after all, is a candidate who launched his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants criminals and "rapists," and he suggested that a federal judge should be disqualified from the Trump University case due to his "Mexican heritage." He has said horrific things about women, including, "Women: You have to treat 'em like shit."
With that kind of racist and sexist history, it's going to be very hard to find any public Hispanic figure, particularly a Hispanic woman, who hasn't criticized Trump in the past.
