America’s leading Hispanic journalist, Jorge Ramos, an anchor with the popular Univision network, found himself brusquely escorted out of a press conference with presidential candidate and mogul Donald Trump here this evening after aggressively confronting him on his immigration proposals.
The ill-tempered tangle between the two men began when Mr Ramos, in a front row seat, stood at the top of the news conference and began to assail the candidate about his plans to deny citizenship to babies of illegal aliens born in the United States and to deport everyone in the US without residence papers.
Soon after Mr Ramos was shown out of the room by security guards, Mr Trump was pressed by other reporters about whether it had been appropriate. “He started screaming,” he asserted, even if Mr Ramos had hardly done such a thing. “He just stood up and started screaming.”
While it may have been the case that Mr Ramos was confronting the candidate about his immigration plans rather than actually posing questions, so public a confrontation with him, caught live by lines of television cameras, may not have been helpful to Mr Trump if he is to reach out to Hispanic voters. There is no journalist more influential in the community than Mr Ramos.
It may have been that that had dawned on Mr Trump as he then proceeded to claim that he wouldn’t mind if they let him back in. And indeed, Mr Ramos was soon back in his seat and quickly back on his feet asserting variously that the candidate was still polling poorly with Hispanic voters, that his proposal to deny citizenship to US babies would be illegal and that deporting 11 million people couldn’t be made to happen. “What are you going to use the army,” he asked.
“I can’t deal with this,” Mr Trump then complained as Mr Ramos continued to harangue him. In the middle of their verbal jousting, he reminded the reporter that he was suing Univision for $500 million for breaking a contract with him after he suggested that Mexico was sending “rapists” and “criminals” to the US in his announcement in June.
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