Hispanic and Latino Americans

So again, if people want to assimilate into American values, and that's again why- Right.

Well, especially again, like a lot of the Mexicans or Latinos, you know, they're pro-life Catholics.

They can fit in well with our community.

But again, if you're just coming in here because you want to commit crimes and you want someone else to pay the bills or, you know, have this whole apparatus of these nongovernmental agencies that are supporting these illegal immigrants through whatever cash stipends, et cetera.

What do you think is going to happen? What are you expecting?

Yet the Hispanic vote, unfortunately, because of the optics of certain domestic policy issues, primarily around the issue of immigration, the malays, not necessarily securing the borders, Hispanics are super in favor of shutting down the border and stopping all illegal immigration.

It has to do with some of the optics regarding some operations that took place under Kristi Noem.

That has impacted the Hispanic vote.

Let not your heart be troubled.

There's nothing out there right now that substantiates the notion that Hispanics are becoming communists or socialists, that they automatically all of a sudden believe in men and women's sports or in late-term abortions or in Sharia law.

Absolutely not.

Or communism.

And there are a lot of Hispanics like myself that will say, hey, they're even illegals.

There are a lot of Hispanic illegals that have been here.

Trust me, I talked to a lot of them.

I've got my ear to the ground and they're here to work.

So your gang members, your drug pushers, your rapists, your child abusers, your wife abuse, spouse abuse, there's a bad group of people that came over.

Those people need to go first.

And the fact that some people, let's just call them Home Depot Hispanics, have been rounded up in this stuff, that's the part that Hispanics don't like.

So there are some Hispanics that have been sitting on the sideline.

to Trump as the white evangelicals are.

But the real group that I would be watching, particularly because we have some toss-up races that are going to really matter, are Latino Protestants.

Again, this is a group that voted about 6 in 10 for Trump in the last election.

It was part of kind of Trump's inroads into the Latino community was mostly among Latino Protestants, not among Latino Catholics.

They have dropped 20 percentage points since 2024.

They are now down to 31% approval of the presence.

And where that really matters is because we have a bunch of, when you look at the religious landscape and these voting things, what really matters is where these religious groups are important for the election.

And so we have a disproportionate number of competitive districts in Midwestern states, in the Northeast, in Alaska, and even Texas, which is really important.

Neil, we did a portion of an episode earlier this year about Huerta, but can you remind our listeners who might not have been with us who she was and why she is currently regarded as such a courageous person?

Well, she founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and built this platform that boosted Latino politicians and voters, really mobilizing them into a powerful community.

a powerful political force across the United States.

But I think, you know, as we talked about her more recently, because this was what, in the last year, I would say, she exposed what had really been, you know, a sort of cult-like atmosphere around Chavez, but particularly his penchant for sexual violence and exploitation of which she was a victim of and had been victimized really for a really long time.

I think this sense of unfairness and what you were saying earlier, the cruelty, the meanness, there was a time in which that cruelty was expressing a certain kind of populist rage on the right, and they embraced it.

I think now... they're no longer tolerating it because actually the unfairness of all of it.

And probably a great many more working class white voters who have Latinos in their families, who live in communities and work with Latino men and women, blah, blah, blah.

They've seen this firsthand and they've seen their friends cruelly treated, called criminals when they weren't criminals.

It certainly is.

The Latino vote, at least the Latino male vote, supported Trump in levels that we've never seen for a Republican presidential candidate before in 2024.

And that tended to be mostly on economic issues.

So many Latinos, like most voters of other races and ethnicities, are very frustrated with inflation and the state of the economy.

That is driving them toward the Democrats, but you're exactly right.

While most voters do favor a stronger border presence than they saw from the Biden administration, I feel that Trump and his team have overdone it.

And so they are reacting badly, particularly Latino and Latina voters.

What they see is overly heavy-handed immigration restrictive policy.

I want to come back to corruption in a minute and what could potentially happen if the Democrats are able to take the Senate.

But just while we're talking about key issues, I've also noticed that Latinos backed Trump last election.

Is the issue of things like immigration and ICE a reason why we're seeing such a tight race in places like Texas?

It certainly is.

The Latino vote, at least the Latino male vote, supported Trump in levels that we've never seen for a Republican presidential candidate before in 2024.

And that tended to be mostly on economic issues.

So many Latinos, like most of those voters of other races and ethnicities, are very frustrated with inflation in the state of the economy.

That is driving them toward the Democrats.

The problem with Trump is he is an all-purpose racist.

He's a racist against African Americans, against black countries, against Hispanics.

He's a racist against people from Asia.

And of course, he's a racist against Arabs and Palestinians.