Trump’s reported racist insult about soldier draws bitter backlash – and staunch denials
By Suzanne Gamboa, reporter for NBC News Latino
A racist comment former president Donald Trump is reported to have made about murdered soldier Vanessa Guillen is drawing backlash from some Hispanics – but it could be tempered by her sister’s support for Trump and the current political divide among Latinos.
The Atlantic magazine reported that Mr Trump, when he was president, complained about the cost of paying for Ms Guillen’s funeral as he had promised her family he would do in a meeting at the White House in July 2020.
Ms Guillen was brutally murdered in 2020 by a fellow soldier while she was stationed at a Texas fort.
Citing two unnamed sources who attended a December 2020 meeting and notes from the meeting, when he was told the $60,000 price tag, Mr Trump allegedly responded: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican.”
He told his chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows, not to pay for it, the magazine reported – although neither Sky News nor its partner NBC News has confirmed that claim – and the Trump team has denied he made such a comment.
Ms Guillen’s sister, Mayra Guillen, who was not at the White House meeting at which Trump is alleged to have made the comment, came to his defence on X…
Artemio Muniz, chairman of the Federation of Hispanic Republicans, a Texas GOP auxiliary group, said Hispanic voters will weigh the Atlantic report against Ms Guillen’s defence of Mr Trump.
He said Mr Trump showed the family respect by “standing against the military complex”.
“They didn’t want to get to the bottom of the investigation, and president Trump brought awareness to that, and he didn’t have to do that,” Muniz said.
Jason Villalba, CEO and board chairman of the Texas Hispanic Public Policy Foundation, said that even though the comments “clearly are in alignment with the sort of things he’s said publicly,” Mr Trump is not likely to suffer repercussions in the election.
“Vanessa’s parents were immigrants. We know how he feels about people of colour, immigrants, Mexican immigrants, undocumented people, so it shouldn’t surprise us that in private that he uses terms like ‘f***ing Mexican'”, said Mr Villalba, who is Mexican-American and a former Republican state legislator who calls himself a “never-Trumper”.
But “if you are a conservative Hispanic and voting for Trump, this kind of rhetoric is already baked into your analysis”, he added.
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Publish date : 2024-10-24 05:18:00
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