Former President Barack Obama accused Hispanic voters of being bigots, claiming that they ignored the current administration’s “racist” immigration policies to vote for Donald Trump because “he supports their views on gay marriage.”
“People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump,” Obama said on The Breakfast Club podcast Wednesday. “But there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts detainees undocumented workers in cages, they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion.”
Despite Obama’s claims that gay marriage drove “evangelical” Hispanic voters to Trump, causing them to ignore Trump’s “racist” immigration policies, same-sex issues did not appear as one of the top ten important issues for Americans going into Election Day and was not a top ten priority for Hispanic voters specifically.
Gay marriage was also not a topic highlighted or heavily paraded by the president in campaign advertisements or speech, reinforcing the idea that LGBTQ+ issues were simply not a top priority or focus for his campaign or his voters. Unlike Obama, Trump was actually the first president who openly supported gay marriage.
Instead, Hispanic voters showed concern for things like the economy, COVID-19, and violent crime, all of which Trump heavily focused on in his re-election campaign, promising more jobs, faster vaccine development, and calling for law and order.
And while Obama attempted to characterize Trump as a racist for his immigration policies and insult the Hispanics who voted for him by pitting racism against other voting priorities, the former president ignored the fact that it was his administration that locked up children in cages long before Trump was even in the political picture.
While the media often lauds and portrays Obama as someone who unites the country with his words, the former president has made many divisive statements, including a history of calling people opposed to gay marriage bigots.
Shortly before his wildly inaccurate comments about Hispanic voters, he told the podcast host without evidence that Republicans “internalize” a “sincere belief” that white men need to be coddled.
“You’ve seen created in Republican politics this sense that white males are victims like they’re the ones who were like under attack which obviously doesn’t jibe with both history and data and economics,” he said. “But that’s a sincere belief, you know that’s been internalized. That’s a story that’s being told and how you unwind that is going to be not something that is done right away. It’s going to take some time.”
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