MSNBC contributor complains of 'crisis' as Latinos move away from Democrats

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Media top headlines July 6

New York Times getting hit by critics and lawmakers for suggesting U.S. flag is now 'alienating some,' NPR decrying the Declaration of Independence as a document with 'deeply ingrained hypocrisies,' and an NBC News historian fawning over Biden round out today's top media headlines

MSNBC contributor Paola Ramos was lambasted after suggesting the trend of Latino voters distancing themselves from the Democratic Party is a "crisis."

Research from the 2020 presidential election revealed that Hispanic voters began gravitating toward former President Donald Trump, despite his eventual loss to President Joe Biden. Trump won 38% of Hispanic voters in 2020, a 10-point increase from 2016, new analysis from the Pew Research Center found.

"How?" asked Ramos, who served as the deputy director of Hispanic press for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" Monday.

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"What we're seeing right now is a cultural identity crisis that we are undergoing as a community that is completely splitting and dividing Latinos," Ramos said.

"In this crisis, you have on the one hand, Latinos that believe in order to achieve the American Dream, you have to get as close as possible to whiteness, and that is something that Trump gave them permission to do," Ramos added. "On the other hand, you have Latinos that believe that in order to achieve the American Dream, you have to get as far as possible from whiteness. And that is a dilemma I don't think we've seen clearly."

"Politics alone doesn’t explain it. I believe Trump tapped into a cultural identity crisis we’re undergoing—& we need to pay attention," Ramos added on Twitter, citing the Pew Research Center.

Media critics, some of whom are Latino themselves, lashed out at Ramos' assertions and told her that Latinos are not a monolith and should not be expected to blindly vote Democrat.

"It’s not so much an identity crisis as it is the rejection of an artificial identity that is built upon politics," tweeted Jorge Bonilla, director of MRC Latino, a Spanish-language conservative watchdog launched by the Media Research Center.

"Exactly. Latinos are not just our ideology," agreed Daniel Garza of The LIBRE Initiative. "We are our parent’s sons & daughters, we’re our shared culture, language, historical legacy, our faith, our diverse American experience, our education, race & ethnicity, our immigrant experience, y mucho mas. Respect our differences."

"Maybe I’m just tired of university professors and woke progressives (especially non-Latinos) projecting their views of who I am - or what I am not - on to all of us… no apologies," he added.

Other critics were "wowed" by MSNBC's narrative. 

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Some analysts argue that Trump made inroads with Latino voters during the 2020 presidential election in part because his messaging was an alternative to the democratic socialist policies of some progressive lawmakers. 

MSNBC political analyst Jaunita Tolliver admitted as much during Monday's segment, noting that Trump and the Republicans were able to tap into issues important to Latinos like combating socialism. Many Latinos said last November that they voted for Trump because the leftist regimes they escaped too closely mirrored the Democratic agenda, such as the rhetoric from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. 

Trump's agenda appeared to work well in Florida's Miami-Dade County, where his gains from 2016 led to a decisive victory in the key battleground state.

"Defund police, open borders, socialism – it’s killing us," Rep. Vincente Gonzalez, D-Texas, said during a post-election conference call. "I had to fight to explain all that."

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Tolliver added that the Democrats' "blanket message" doesn't always produce results and that Latinos are not a "monolith." But she agreed with her fellow panelists that state voting laws, many of them led by Republicans, are making it harder for Latinos to vote, calling them "voter suppression bills."