‘You Know Better’: CNN Commentator, Former Trump Campaign Official Spar Over Historic Number Of Latinos Backing Trump

CNN commentator Maria Cardona sparred Monday with Giancarlo Sopo, a former campaign director of Spanish Language Media for the 2020 Trump campaign, over the reasons that a historic number of Latinos supported President-elect Donald Trump in the recent election.

Despite Trump’s gains with Hispanic voters, Cardona warned Trump’s plan to enact mass deportations on illegal immigrants will lead to “cruelty” and family separation, which she suggested will lead to division and backlash among Latinos. Sopo said immigration is a top issue among the Hispanic population that ultimately led a historic percentage of the voter bloc to support Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Immigration was cited as one of the top 5 issues for Hispanics for voting against Kamala Harris. So I think it’s very clear, no matter which polls you look at, favor a very strong border policy because it’s just common sense,” Sopo said. “And we simply cannot have millions of people rolling around this country most of whom have not been vetted, many of them have criminal backgrounds, and I agree most of them just come here because they want to work and they want to have a better life, but we don’t know that because we don’t know who these people are. So, I actually do not anticipate any kind of major backlash to any kind of border enforcement.”

“Giancarlo, come on. You know better,” Cardona pushed back. “You know so much better than what you are spouting right now. Our community is going to go through pain, our community is going to go through cruelty, that is not what anyone voted for. And in fact, I will tell the American electorate, if the incoming Trump administration goes through this, here’s the people they’re gonna go after. They’re gonna go after your kids’ classmates, they’re gonna go after the delivery guy, they’re gonna go after the guy who take care of your kids, they’re gonna go after the people who work in restaurants, they’re gonna go after the business owners in your community.”

Cardona argued that American voters did not vote for a potentially multi-billion dollar cost to deport millions of illegal immigrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and suggested Trump will hurt the job market by deporting illegal immigrants. Sopo said the Hispanic community is “sick and tired” of elites in Washington, D.C., downplaying the crisis of illegal immigration and attempting to speak on the Hispanic people’s behalf.

“The Hispanic community is sick and tired of D.C. elites pulling on our heartstrings. Those heartstrings have been pulled and tugged at so hard that they’ve snapped. We’re sick and tired of people, so they can feel better at cocktail parties, saying that the murders of people like Laken Riley, though tragic, are just part of being a generous society. We’re telling people loud and clear, you do not speak on our behalf. And these Hispanic groups, you have to keep in mind these are the same people who just a couple of years ago encouraged their party to call us Latinx, these are the same people who lobbied Joe Biden to apologize to Laken Riley’s murderer for calling him an illegal immigrant … Yes, Joe Biden apologized for calling Laken Riley’s murderer an illegal immigrant.”

“Not a single Hispanic, not one, was offended by that, these groups do not speak for our community, they are way to the left of your average Latino, we’re not worried about pronouns, we are worried about prosperity,” Sopo continued.

Surveys have found that an increasing number of Hispanic Americans, particularly Latino men, supported Trump’s mass deportation plan and trusted the president-elect over the Democrats to handle the crisis. Trump made history Tuesday night by winning over 57% of the vote in Starr County, Texas, a border county with a 97% Hispanic population that had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats since 1892.