Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:58 pm
Donald Trump’s Cinco de Mayo message, “Happy Cinco de Mayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” has justly earned him some criticism. And not because taco bowls are not actually served in the Trump Tower Grill.
Janet Murguia, president and CEO of Latino civil rights group La Raza, tweeted that it is “a Trump trifecta: clueless, offensive, and self-promoting.” The judgment of social media is that she is right. Trump claimed his tweet was loved, but then Trump also claims he loves women and Hispanics.
In two more tweets, she added that “eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn’t cut it w/ our community in 2016” and “we know what @realdonaldtrump has said and what he has proposed. #wall #massdeportation #TrumpNotoDACA,” DACA being Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
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Trump’s defenders have pretended a guileless response of “What’s so offensive about eating a taco bowl and saying you like Hispanics”? Murguia got called a “puta” and told to “Take your ILLEGAL Latinos and go back to the nearest Latino country.”
Bill O’Reilly is one of those pretending to be horrified by the storm of criticism in response to Trump’s tweet, saying Friday on The O’Reilly Factor,
“Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. Donald Trump tweeted out a picture of himself eating tacos. Above the picture he said that he loves Hispanics. Almost immediately, the president of the militant organization La Raza tweeted out, “Eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn’t cut it with our community in 2016. Trump is clueless, offensive and self promoting.”
“So eating a taco on Cinco De Mayo is now offensive? That’s like saying eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, and saying you love the Irish is offensive. That’s how insane American culture has become.”
O’Reilly was being disingenuous. Not only has the point been made that Cinco de Mayo is not a “Hispanic” holiday but a Mexican holiday, and not only has Murguia made the point that no “self-respecting Latino” would even consider a taco bowl part of their culture, but O’Reilly ignored Murguia’s third tweet, the one that explained the reasons for her offense:
“We know what @realdonaldtrump has said and what he has proposed. #wall #massdeportation #TrumpNotoDACA.”
Of course, if O’Reilly would have been honest about Murguia’s objections, he’d have had no argument, which has been a problem haunting all of Republican politics since 2000, when Bush Jr. introduced “truthiness” into our discourse.
Hillary Clinton, whom O’Reilly was quick to point out had some Hispanic detractors too, was quick to make the point in a tweet O’Reilly refused to make in his “analysis”:
“I love Hispanics!” —Trump, 52 minutes ago https://t.co/b9mv7nUduN
“They’re gonna be deported.” —Trump, yesterday https://t.co/HzFWUT1XFl
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 5, 2016
Former Mexican president Vincente Fox made the point to CNN that “They don’t know about Mexican food in Trump Tower. You’re gonna get indigestion eating that. Today he loves us, he says. Yesterday he said he hated us. What is he going to say tomorrow?”
It was Full Frontal’s Samantha Bee who had perhaps the best response, however:
The best taco bowls are made by immigrants who resent a rich prick calling them rapists. Love inauthentic Mexican! pic.twitter.com/9tEORJxoZp
— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) May 5, 2016
What Trump said has nothing to do with saying you love the Irish. Trump hasn’t called on building a wall around Ireland, or deporting Irish-Americans, and he hasn’t called them “rapists” and “thugs.”
Obviously this whole brouhaha is about much more than Trump eating a taco. Trump doesn’t love Hispanics, not for tacos or taco bowls or for any other reason, as he has thoroughly and completely demonstrated with his proposed “Great Wall of Trump,” by calls for a Nazi-like round up of 11 million men, women, and children, and by calling them “thugs” and “rapists” and “killers.”
Sorry, but eating a taco bowl and saying you love Hispanics doesn’t compensate for that. Gallup showed last month that 77 percent of Hispanics have an unfavorable opinion of Trump (82 percent according to a CBS News Poll). Eating a taco bowl and saying he loves them, as Murguia said, isn’t going to cut it.
O’Reilly is right that America has become crazy, but the author of that craziness isn’t Murguia and other Trump opponents, but in thinking that eating a taco bowl and saying you love Hispanics makes up for all the terrible things Trump has said about them in the past.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
