Ease up on Latinos, party urges Trump
Donald Trump has been asked to ‘‘tone it down’’ by the head of the Republican Party amid fears that his claim that many Mexican immigrants are rapists will damage its hopes of taking back the White House.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called Trump this week and warned him that his outbursts were enraging Hispanic voters and could hurt the party’s other candidates.
The tycoon seems to have ignored the message and continued to insist that illegal immigrants cause ‘‘tremendous problems in terms of crime, in terms of murder, in terms of rape’’. He also denied that Priebus had asked him to rein in his rhetoric.
While Trump’s immigration comments are not hurting him in the polls – some surveys put him second only to Jeb Bush – they have alienated many of his business partners.
The latest to cut ties is Jose Andres, a Spanish-born celebrity chef who has backed out of opening a restaurant in Trump’s new hotel down the street from the White House.
‘‘Donald Trump’s recent statements disparaging immigrants make it impossible for my company and I to move forward,’’ Andres said.
The Trump business empire responded to the decision with threats of a lawsuit. Trump is already suing Univision, the Spanish-language television net- work, after it dropped its coverage of his Miss Universe beauty pageant. He has also threatened to sue NBC for the same reason.
While the 69-year-old has angered many fellow Republicans, he seems to be enjoying his time in the spotlight and is regularly summoning US television networks to his Trump Tower headquarters in New York for interviews. He told NBC that he had ‘‘a great relationship with the Mexican people’’.
‘‘They love me, I love them,’’ Trump said, before insisting that Latinos would vote for him despite his comments.
‘‘If I get the nomination, I’ll win the Latino vote.’’
There are about 11 million illegal immigrants, known as undocumented migrants, in the US and they pose a policy quandary for Democrats and Republicans. They are too many to be deported and some have been in the US for decades, working, paying taxes and raising American children.
Many Latino voters have family members who are in the US illegally and would punish candidates who demonise their community.
Hillary Clinton and most Democrats support a ‘‘pathway to citizenship’’ under which illegal immigrants could eventually become US citizens.
Republicans are divided on the question of citizenship and most emphasise a massive deployment of resources to stop new immigrants crossing the 3219 kilometre border with Mexico.
Trump’s solution is to build a wall, which he says he would force the Mexican government to pay for, but he has not said what he would do with people already in the US.
Telegraph Group