Politico
By Annie Karni
August 26, 2015
The
Univision anchor in the front of row of Donald Trump’s pre-rally press
conference in Iowa piped up to ask a question as the Q&A began.
Then
Jorge Ramos quickly became the surprise star of the news cycle, the
latest to present itself in Trump’s unapologetic, take-no-prisoners
spectacle of a campaign.
“Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump!” said Ramos, one of the country’s most influential Hispanic journalists.
“Sit down, sit down. You weren’t called,” Trump responded gruffly.
“I’m a reporter, an immigrant and a citizen. I have the right to ask a question,” Ramos protested.
“No, you don’t,” grumbled Trump. “You haven’t been called. Go back to Univision.”
Tension
in the room mounted as it became clear to reporters that it would not
be Trump’s answers, but the fight itself, that was becoming the story.
After almost two minutes
of heated back and forth, Trump’s security detail grabbed Ramos and
physically removed him from the room.
The
spat became the latest impromptu Trump brawl to captivate a news cycle.
Even though the billionaire real estate mogul eventually relented,
allowing Ramos to return
to the press conference and ask a series of pointed questions about
immigration, the explosive exchange effectively overshadowed an
otherwise packed, boisterous rally along the Mississippi River.
The
event included its own share of attention-grabbing elements:
Conservative author Ann Coulter appeared ahead of the main act. Just
before Trump took the stage, word
leaked that Sam Clovis, a prominent Iowa operative who quit Rick
Perry’s campaign just this week, would be joining Trump’s team to serve
as his national co-chairman and policy adviser.
But it was Ramos’ ejection and eventual return that dominated coverage.
After
Ramos left, Trump tried to move on. He called on a reporter who
wondered whether he would apologize for another media fight — a series
of tweets attacking Fox News
anchor Megyn Kelly. (He said he would not, and that she owes him an
apology.)
The subject quickly returned to Ramos.
“You’re
running for president, and one of our country’s top journalists was
just escorted out of your news conference,” a reporter asked. “Do you
think you handled that
situation correctly?”
Trump
has said he doesn’t apologize. But even he seemed to sense some
compromise was necessary and Ramos returned. Even then, Trump refused to
take the blame for him being
escorted out: “I didn’t escort him out…. He just stands up and starts
screaming. Maybe he’s at fault also.”
Trump
said he only refused to take his question “because he was out of
order,” not because of who he was. “He’s obviously a very emotional
person.”
Ramos accepted the invitation to try again — he was back in the front row about 15 minutes after he’d been escorted out.
“Here’s
the problem with your immigration plan,” Ramos launched right in. “You
cannot deport 11 million … you cannot deny citizenship to children in
this country — ”
“Why do you say that?” Trump interrupted. “A lot of people think that an act of Congress can do that.”
Trump
defended his call to end birthright citizenship, complaining, “If you
come across for one day, one day, have a baby, now the baby is going to
be an American citizen.”
The
riveting exchange continued just like that — Ramos firing off pointed
questions, and Trump parrying or disputing the premise.
“How are you going to build a 1,900-mile wall?” Ramos asked.
“I’m a builder,” said Trump. “What’s more complicated is building a building that’s 95 stories tall.”
“How are you going to deport 11 million people? Are you going to bring the army?”
Trump responded that he would do it in “a very humane fashion” and said, “I have a bigger heart than you do.”
Ramos
has significant sway in Spanish-language media. He hosts gigs on two
networks, Univision and Fusion, and is as an outspoken, bilingual
presence on Twitter. He has
called Trump’s immigration plan “wrong,” “absurd” and “impossible to
achieve.”
Both
he and Univision have been targets of Trump’s wrath. Trump sued the
network for $500 million after Univision decided to drop the Miss
Universe contest over the candidate’s
comments about Mexican immigrants.
When
Ramos tried, via handwritten letter, to invite Trump to sit down for an
interview, Trump published the letter, which included Ramos’ personal
cellphone number, on
his Instagram account. (The post has since been removed.)
Ramos
hasn’t given up on landing an interview, however. In a statement on
Tuesday, Isaac Lee, who serves as Fusion CEO and Univision head of news,
said, “We’d love for
Mr. Trump to sit down for an in-depth interview with Jorge to talk
about the specifics of his proposals.”
His
latest self-made media fracas finished, the GOP’s polling leader took
the stage — to chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” — in front of a packed
room at the Grand River
Center, which sits on the Mississippi River. In his rambling, hour-long
version of a stump speech, he served up his trademark mix of
braggadocio and red meat, talked up his latest strong poll numbers and
mocked other members of the Republican field.
As
much as he seems to be enjoying himself and the front-runner glow,
Trump admitted that running for office “is something that’s not very
pleasant” and people who do
it “really take chances.”
He
focused his attacks on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, calling him a
“low-energy person” and accusing him of using Jeb! in campaign
literature because he is ashamed of
his last name. And he maintained it was a sign of weakness that Bush
and Sen. Marco Rubio, longtime allies from Florida, are “hugging and
kissing and proclaiming their great love” for each other.
And, of course, Trump proclaimed his own strength.
“I’m
the most militaristic person,” he bragged later in the speech. “I would
build a military so strong, so powerful, nobody would have to use it. I
would have the best
of everything.”
Trump
said that American strength did not mean that the U.S. must fight
others’ battles for them. “If we get attacked, Japan doesn’t have to
help us,” he said. “If they
get attacked, we have to go over to Japan. Oy yoy yoy, it’s a long
flight.”
One
of Trump’s biggest applause lines came when he lashed out at scripted
candidates. He promised to “outlaw Teleprompters for anybody running for
president.”
He
said it was important to be able to speak off the cuff and for oneself —
but in the press conference beforehand he would not say whether or not
he writes his own tweets.
“I think about them myself,” he said.
Some in the crowd said they were converted by his performance.
“My
husband had to convince me to come today,” said Donna Nicksic, who
drove five hours from Indiana to see Trump. “I didn’t think he had the
ability to win. I thought
he has no filter and I thought that would hurt him.”
But she walked away a believer, despite being offended by his attacks on Kelly.
“He’s
authentic, he’s genuine, he won’t be influenced by the lobbyists. I
think that’s vital,” she said. “I think it’s better to make mistakes in
the things that you say
rather than being so careful to say the right things.”
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