Medium (Op-ed)
By Gabe Ortiz
April 22, 2016
This week, America’s Voice released new polling that showed Donald Trump had an astounding 87% unfavorable opinion among Latino voters. No surprise given his venomous campaign rhetoric.
This week, we’ve also seen a new spin on the GOP frontrunner: a “Donald Trump has been sounding more Presidential” phenomenon.
That really deserves all the side-eye in the world.
“The new Donald Trump should scare the hell out of the GOP establishment,” declared The Fix’s Chris Cillizza.
“Donald Trump 2.0 made his official debut Tuesday night following his sweeping victory in New York,” he wrote. “That version of Trump was markedly more disciplined, gentler and more appealing than the version of Trump we’ve seen for much of the last year.”
Over at MSNBC, Trump got all the praise worthy of a toddler who didn’t purposefully knock his plate off the table at Red Lobster.
“The tone with Donald Trump tonight was so much more, so much more different than I had seen just a couple weeks ago,” claimed reporter Katy Tur. “He came out, and he was gracious in his campaign speech. It was really short. It was concise.”
They just loved Trump 2.0 over at Fox News, too.
“You heard Donald Trump tonight sounding more presidential,” said Megyn Kelly, herself a frequent target for Trump and his nasty legion of Trumpettes. The reason for the praise? He referred to Ted Cruz as “Senator” instead of the usual “Lyin’ Ted.” Lincoln-esque, that Trump.
But sure enough, Kelly’s guests parroted the platitudes right back. Former Mitt Romney advisor Steve Schmidt called it “significant.” “Exactly,” concurred former John McCain advisor Nicole Wallace.
Now, we’ve even got his new campaign adviser telling GOP insiders that Trump has been playing a part and his sky-high negatives are really just a matter of “personality.”
Come on. Let’s not pretend like the last ten months of “We’re gonna build a wall!” and Mexican immigrants are “rapists” never happened. This Trump 2.0 is still a racist, still a Birther, and still a misogynist who would again make vile comments about Kelly for another couple poll points.
It’s not Trump’s personality that drives the negatives, it’s his racism, xenophobia, misogyny, birtherism — for starters.
Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters are still attacking immigrants and people of color with physical violence and verbal abuse at his rallies and other places around the country — and his campaign is still actively encouraging it.
What Trump is hoping is that we’re all foolish enough to fall for this supposed make-over — a make-over he couldn’t even keep up if he wanted to anyway. Here’s the day after that oh-so-Presidential victory speech in New York earlier this week:
Here’s the plain truth: this media-driven “Trump has become Presidential” meme has lived and died over and over again.
When Trump lost Iowa to Cruz back in February:
After one of the Republican debates last month:
After his March speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This observation came from none other than his unofficial surrogate from “Morning Joe”:
And this past weekend, when cable news claimed he broke his silence, even though he’d been yapping just as loud as ever:
So Trump said “Senator Cruz” instead of “Lyin’ Ted”? Okay. But Trump still called Latinos sexual predators. He still wants to ban Muslims from entering the US. He’s still for the round-up and deportation of 11 million immigrants, and he still thinks that Black people deserve to get “roughed up” at his rallies. And, he’ll still pay your legal bills if you do it, too.
It’s obvious to anyone watching how Trump earned an 87% unfavorable opinion from Latino voters.
Trump can’t erase or take back his extremely hateful words, no matter how hard he tries — or how much some in the media will try to abet him in that effort.
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