Trump vs. Ramos: A Clash of Icons

Donald Trump, who famously scoffs at "political correctness," can climb as far up on his high horse as anybody else when someone is impolite to him.

Someone like, for example, Jorge Ramos, main news anchor at Univision and Fusion, who tried to ask Trump a question at a Dubuque news conference on Wednesday without being called on.

Yes, I would agree with Ramos' critics that he violated Trump's ground rules. But both men got something out of this face-off. Each looked tough and uncompromising to his fan base.

Ramos, famous for his confrontational interview style after weeks of trying, finally forced Trump to face an important question: How was he going to deport, as he has promised, all of the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

That's a good question. Immigration reform is Trump's signature issue. Yet he produces no clue in his interviews, his news conferences or his brief immigration position paper as to how much his mass deportation scheme would cost.

No wonder Trump is popular among disgruntled folks who long for simple answers in our complicated world. When he finally got around to addressing Ramos' question, he made mass deportation sound easy.

"I have a bigger heart than you do," he Trump-splained. "We're going to do it in a very humane fashion. ... The one thing we're going to start with immediately are the gangs, and the real bad ones, and you do agree there are some bad ones? Do you agree with that or do you think everyone is just perfect? ... We have tremendous crime, we have tremendous problems."

That's The Donald for you. He makes a grand statement, then implies that you, the questioner, must be a coddler of criminals to challenge his wisdom.

In fact, we should have no delusion that mass deportation would be cheap or easy. The conservative American Action Forum, for example, estimates that mass deportation would take about 20 years and the federal government would have to spend $400 billion to $600 billion to catch, detain, process and transport the immigrants to their home countries.

The Bipartisan Policy Center found that removing all undocumented immigrants from the United States would reduce the U.S. labor force by 6.4 percent, shrink the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), grow the deficit and damage the housing market, among other areas of the economy.

But when presented with such data, Trump casually dismisses it as wrong. He cites his own unnamed experts, yet presents no alternative evidence to back up his claim. Instead, he fills the air with Trump-talk -- which is mostly about Trump, how Trump feels about things and how smart, wonderful and good-looking Trump is.

For these evasions, among others, his supporters ironically praise his "straight talk" and "telling it like it is."

In that spirit, when Ramos first asked a question without having been called on, Trump told him to sit down, shut up and wait his turn. But, Ramos, who has described himself and Univision as "clearly pro-Latino or pro-immigrant" and "the voice of those who don't have a voice," kept asking his question to the point of sermonizing -- as Trump signaled to his security guards.

Was Ramos baiting Trump? Probably. But Trump took the bait.

As Ramos was forcibly escorted out of the room by Trump's towering bodyguards (He was invited back a few minutes later), an irritated Trump unleashed a verbal shot that would echo through the media -- particularly Hispanic media: "Go back to Univision."

Also caught on video, as Ramos cooled his heels in the hallway outside, a Trump supporter wagged a finger in his face and scolded him for being "very rude" before adding, "This is not about you. Get out of my country. Get out."

"I am an American citizen," Ramos, a naturalized immigrant from Mexico, responded. But the man was not impressed. "Well, whatever. No. Univision? No."

That scene had to bring heartburn to the Republican National Committee leaders. President Obama won re-election with 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012. Recent research shows Republicans will need to win 40 percent or more of the Hispanic vote to win next year. Trump boasts that he will win Latino voters. Right. I doubt that even he is that good of a salesman.

========

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)