Look at this bullshyt...he tries to rile people up against Trump, as if Trump doesn't have a single, solitary point about all these illegals.
Ramos does NOT care about existing Americans.
Jorge Ramos
Lunch with the FT: rebel anchor Jorge Ramos
He’s the face of the news for the US’s 55m Hispanics but for English-speaking Americans he is mostly known for taking on Donald Trump. Over chiles en nogada in Florida, the anchorman talks about hate, hope — and why he’s always been a rebel
SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
by: John Paul Rathbone
© James Ferguson
Those of us with roots in Latin America know that timekeeping isn’t one of our most celebrated characteristics. There had also been a tropical rainstorm in the morning, leaving Miami’s steaming roads thick with traffic. But Jorge Ramos, who has made puncturing Latino stereotypes something of his life’s work, arrives at 1pm with the on-the-second punctuality of a practised television broadcaster.
We are lunching at Talavera, a Mexican restaurant in Coral Gables, Florida, and today the man sometimes described as “the most influential news anchor in the Americas” wears a casual jacket, plain dress shirt open at the collar, and jeans. Slight and trim, Ramos greets me with a handshake and slings a backpack on to the bench on his side of the booth. “It’s my son’s favourite Mexican local,” the 58-year-old says, his boyish face crinkling into an easy smile.
Ramos occupies an unusual position in US media. Born in Mexico City, for the past three decades he has been based in Miami and has co-anchored the flagship evening news of Univision, the largest Hispanic broadcaster in the US. Watched by 2m households, his 6.30pm show has comparable ratings to equivalent primetime broadcasts on English-language stations such as CBS and Fox. It has also made Ramos probably the most recognised and trusted face among the 55m Hispanics in the US — their Walter Cronkite, although George Clooney may be more apt given Ramos’s movie-star looks and Nice Guy reputation. (The Venezuelan-American Uber driver who delivered me to the restaurant said he considered Ramos “muy señor”, a gentleman.)
Despite the accolades — eight Emmys and a bucketful of journalism awards — most of English-speaking America only discovered Ramos after he was thrown out of a Donald Trump news conference last year. “Go back to Univision,” Trump had retorted when Ramos persistently questioned his plans to deport 11m undocumented immigrants. Security escorted Ramos out shortly after. The scene, premeditated by Ramos, made great TV — “The most artificial medium imaginable,” as he admits. With a long record of defending immigrant rights on television and in print, it also cemented Ramos’s reputation for “giving voice to the voiceless”. More controversially, it kicked off a media storm that impugned Ramos as a partisan anti-Trumper who had abandoned journalistic neutrality, so making his points of view invalid.
“I’ve never seen an election like this before, so I am glad to be 58 now,” Ramos says as soon as he sits down. “I have the confidence and technique to cover it. I mean, what do you do when confronted with a figure like Trump? He seems to me to be one of those cases where you have to take a stand. If you don’t, and Trump is elected US president, you will regret it.”
…
Ramos’s childhood nickname was “pote”, short for potrillo or “colt”, and he has been rushing around ever since. Alongside a day job that involves stunts such as strapping a GoPro to his chest and swimming across the Rio Grande, he writes a weekly syndicated column, co-hosts two weekend news reviews in Spanish and in English, and writes books (12 so far).
He talks fast and with directness unusual among Mexicans, better known for ceremonial circumlocution. To try and slow things down a bit, I order a tequila with a “sangrita” rider of spicy tomato juice, and ask Ramos to join me. “Thank you but no,” he says. “I have to drive to work. There is also the show. I have to be careful.” So I sip my smoky Don Julio alone and suggest we order food.
To my delight, chiles en nogada is on the menu. Invented by Mexican nuns 200 years ago, the recipe consists of a green poblano pepper stuffed with finely chopped meat, covered in a walnut-based cream sauce, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. Ramos modestly suggests the fixed lunch menu but gives in to my enthusiasm. The waiter takes our order (“¿Qué tal, Jorge?” he asks familiarly). We agree on a shared entrée of guacamole, and press on.
I ask Ramos if Trump reminds him of any populist Latin American presidents he has interviewed. “I first met Hugo Chávez in 1998, when he was still wearing a suit and tie. Yes, they do share a populist touch,” Ramos replies. “Of course, it is impossible to imagine a dictatorship in the US. Still, everything Chávez said even then centred around his strength, himself. He said ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’ a lot. You see some of that in Trump.”
At this, Ramos discloses that his daughter Paola, from his first marriage, works on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He then comments that a distinguishing feature of this US election is its “total lack of transparency, from both sides,” from Clinton’s emails and health to Trump’s unreleased tax returns and lies.
Ramos has always considered himself to be a rebel. Growing up, he stood up against the authority of his middle-class father, an architect; at school, he disobeyed the monks who taught him; and in the early 1980s, he resigned in protest from his first job as a cub reporter at Televisa. Mexico’s biggest broadcaster had long been a flattering mouthpiece for the Institutional Revolutionary party, which wielded total power in Mexico for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000, and when Televisa producers asked Ramos to censor a critical piece that he had put together on Mexican attitudes to power, he erased the tape before it could be broadcast.
Ramos sold his VW Beetle, moved to Los Angeles, studied journalism at an extension course at UCLA and began working at a small Hispanic station, Canal 34, filing up to three stories a day from the street. “It was a wonderful school,” he once wrote.
In 1986, to his surprise, Ramos became the Miami-based anchor of the evening news show he still co-presents. Since then he has been elbowed in the ribs by Fidel Castro’s security detail after he pressed the Cuban dictator, asking him if it wasn’t time to call elections. He has received death threats in Colombia after he questioned then-president Ernesto Samper over allegations his campaign had been financed with drug money. More recently, he has variously taken Clinton and Bernie Sanders to task, while Barack Obama squirmed in his seat during a 2014 interview in which Ramos described him as the US’s “deporter in chief” for expelling 2m migrants. “All I now do in English is what I’ve been doing in Spanish for decades,” Ramos insists. “I ask questions.”
The guacamole arrives, a handy visual prompt. Ramos turns to his mantra: the Latinisation of the US. He is an enthusiastic cheerleader for this demographic shift, both as an immigrant who became a US citizen in 2008, and as the star of a private-equity-owned Latino company rumoured to be seeking a listing. The purchasing power of the Hispanic market is already estimated to be $1.4tn and it is growing every day.
“By 2044 whites will be a minority in the US,” Ramos says. “They sense this, they feel fearful, and that is why Donald Trump is their symbol, the man who will keep the ‘others’ out. But that’s not the future. This is,” Ramos says, pointing around the restaurant, busy with bilingual custom. “Trump will be the last person to seek the presidency with only the white vote.”
His plate has a barely touched tortilla chip with a dollop of chilli sauce on top. Then the main course arrives: I survey the dish with pleasure but it tastes bland and has no aroma. Ramos shrugs: his senses of taste and smell are impaired after a botched operation on a broken nose. “Can you smell anything? I can’t,” he says. “My mother would probably make it differently,” he adds courteously.
…
Ramos’s latest project, a documentary co-produced with HBO that explores hate in America, has taken him around the country. I wonder if in his reporting he found Trump to be a symptom or a cause of the US’s seething resentment? “An important part of the US population is afraid and angry,” he says. I ask if this simply makes Trump the voice of a community that feels threatened, just as Ramos is among Hispanics? “That is just what the Ku Klux Klan said,” is his surprising answer. “They told me: you give your point of view, we give ours. What’s the difference?”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Ramos does NOT care about existing Americans.
Jorge Ramos
Lunch with the FT: rebel anchor Jorge Ramos
He’s the face of the news for the US’s 55m Hispanics but for English-speaking Americans he is mostly known for taking on Donald Trump. Over chiles en nogada in Florida, the anchorman talks about hate, hope — and why he’s always been a rebel
SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
by: John Paul Rathbone
© James Ferguson
Those of us with roots in Latin America know that timekeeping isn’t one of our most celebrated characteristics. There had also been a tropical rainstorm in the morning, leaving Miami’s steaming roads thick with traffic. But Jorge Ramos, who has made puncturing Latino stereotypes something of his life’s work, arrives at 1pm with the on-the-second punctuality of a practised television broadcaster.
We are lunching at Talavera, a Mexican restaurant in Coral Gables, Florida, and today the man sometimes described as “the most influential news anchor in the Americas” wears a casual jacket, plain dress shirt open at the collar, and jeans. Slight and trim, Ramos greets me with a handshake and slings a backpack on to the bench on his side of the booth. “It’s my son’s favourite Mexican local,” the 58-year-old says, his boyish face crinkling into an easy smile.
Ramos occupies an unusual position in US media. Born in Mexico City, for the past three decades he has been based in Miami and has co-anchored the flagship evening news of Univision, the largest Hispanic broadcaster in the US. Watched by 2m households, his 6.30pm show has comparable ratings to equivalent primetime broadcasts on English-language stations such as CBS and Fox. It has also made Ramos probably the most recognised and trusted face among the 55m Hispanics in the US — their Walter Cronkite, although George Clooney may be more apt given Ramos’s movie-star looks and Nice Guy reputation. (The Venezuelan-American Uber driver who delivered me to the restaurant said he considered Ramos “muy señor”, a gentleman.)
Despite the accolades — eight Emmys and a bucketful of journalism awards — most of English-speaking America only discovered Ramos after he was thrown out of a Donald Trump news conference last year. “Go back to Univision,” Trump had retorted when Ramos persistently questioned his plans to deport 11m undocumented immigrants. Security escorted Ramos out shortly after. The scene, premeditated by Ramos, made great TV — “The most artificial medium imaginable,” as he admits. With a long record of defending immigrant rights on television and in print, it also cemented Ramos’s reputation for “giving voice to the voiceless”. More controversially, it kicked off a media storm that impugned Ramos as a partisan anti-Trumper who had abandoned journalistic neutrality, so making his points of view invalid.
“I’ve never seen an election like this before, so I am glad to be 58 now,” Ramos says as soon as he sits down. “I have the confidence and technique to cover it. I mean, what do you do when confronted with a figure like Trump? He seems to me to be one of those cases where you have to take a stand. If you don’t, and Trump is elected US president, you will regret it.”
…
Ramos’s childhood nickname was “pote”, short for potrillo or “colt”, and he has been rushing around ever since. Alongside a day job that involves stunts such as strapping a GoPro to his chest and swimming across the Rio Grande, he writes a weekly syndicated column, co-hosts two weekend news reviews in Spanish and in English, and writes books (12 so far).
He talks fast and with directness unusual among Mexicans, better known for ceremonial circumlocution. To try and slow things down a bit, I order a tequila with a “sangrita” rider of spicy tomato juice, and ask Ramos to join me. “Thank you but no,” he says. “I have to drive to work. There is also the show. I have to be careful.” So I sip my smoky Don Julio alone and suggest we order food.
To my delight, chiles en nogada is on the menu. Invented by Mexican nuns 200 years ago, the recipe consists of a green poblano pepper stuffed with finely chopped meat, covered in a walnut-based cream sauce, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. Ramos modestly suggests the fixed lunch menu but gives in to my enthusiasm. The waiter takes our order (“¿Qué tal, Jorge?” he asks familiarly). We agree on a shared entrée of guacamole, and press on.
I ask Ramos if Trump reminds him of any populist Latin American presidents he has interviewed. “I first met Hugo Chávez in 1998, when he was still wearing a suit and tie. Yes, they do share a populist touch,” Ramos replies. “Of course, it is impossible to imagine a dictatorship in the US. Still, everything Chávez said even then centred around his strength, himself. He said ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’ a lot. You see some of that in Trump.”
At this, Ramos discloses that his daughter Paola, from his first marriage, works on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He then comments that a distinguishing feature of this US election is its “total lack of transparency, from both sides,” from Clinton’s emails and health to Trump’s unreleased tax returns and lies.
Ramos has always considered himself to be a rebel. Growing up, he stood up against the authority of his middle-class father, an architect; at school, he disobeyed the monks who taught him; and in the early 1980s, he resigned in protest from his first job as a cub reporter at Televisa. Mexico’s biggest broadcaster had long been a flattering mouthpiece for the Institutional Revolutionary party, which wielded total power in Mexico for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000, and when Televisa producers asked Ramos to censor a critical piece that he had put together on Mexican attitudes to power, he erased the tape before it could be broadcast.
Ramos sold his VW Beetle, moved to Los Angeles, studied journalism at an extension course at UCLA and began working at a small Hispanic station, Canal 34, filing up to three stories a day from the street. “It was a wonderful school,” he once wrote.
In 1986, to his surprise, Ramos became the Miami-based anchor of the evening news show he still co-presents. Since then he has been elbowed in the ribs by Fidel Castro’s security detail after he pressed the Cuban dictator, asking him if it wasn’t time to call elections. He has received death threats in Colombia after he questioned then-president Ernesto Samper over allegations his campaign had been financed with drug money. More recently, he has variously taken Clinton and Bernie Sanders to task, while Barack Obama squirmed in his seat during a 2014 interview in which Ramos described him as the US’s “deporter in chief” for expelling 2m migrants. “All I now do in English is what I’ve been doing in Spanish for decades,” Ramos insists. “I ask questions.”
The guacamole arrives, a handy visual prompt. Ramos turns to his mantra: the Latinisation of the US. He is an enthusiastic cheerleader for this demographic shift, both as an immigrant who became a US citizen in 2008, and as the star of a private-equity-owned Latino company rumoured to be seeking a listing. The purchasing power of the Hispanic market is already estimated to be $1.4tn and it is growing every day.
“By 2044 whites will be a minority in the US,” Ramos says. “They sense this, they feel fearful, and that is why Donald Trump is their symbol, the man who will keep the ‘others’ out. But that’s not the future. This is,” Ramos says, pointing around the restaurant, busy with bilingual custom. “Trump will be the last person to seek the presidency with only the white vote.”
His plate has a barely touched tortilla chip with a dollop of chilli sauce on top. Then the main course arrives: I survey the dish with pleasure but it tastes bland and has no aroma. Ramos shrugs: his senses of taste and smell are impaired after a botched operation on a broken nose. “Can you smell anything? I can’t,” he says. “My mother would probably make it differently,” he adds courteously.
…
Ramos’s latest project, a documentary co-produced with HBO that explores hate in America, has taken him around the country. I wonder if in his reporting he found Trump to be a symptom or a cause of the US’s seething resentment? “An important part of the US population is afraid and angry,” he says. I ask if this simply makes Trump the voice of a community that feels threatened, just as Ramos is among Hispanics? “That is just what the Ku Klux Klan said,” is his surprising answer. “They told me: you give your point of view, we give ours. What’s the difference?”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
