Before Donald Trump took over Republican politics, most of the party exercised some caution while targeting immigrants. The political calculus was simple: GOP officials and candidates didn’t want to risk a voter backlash, especially in Latino communities.
Trump, however, felt comfortable testing those assumptions. He used racist rhetoric toward immigrants in 2016, for example, but nevertheless fared better among Latino voters than Mitt Romney did four years earlier. He implemented ugly anti-immigrant policies while in office — even separating Latino children from their families and locking them in cages — and his share of the Latino vote went up, not down.
As part of the former president’s comeback bid, the Republican has targeted migrants with dehumanizing rhetoric that echoes Hitler, all while promising to create militarized mass deportations and detention camps if voters reward him with a second term. He’s even talked about putting migrants into a ring to fight for Americans’ entertainment.
It’s against this backdrop that Republican National Convention attendees waved professionally made “MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW!” signs, while chanting “Send them back” on the convention floor.
And Trump nevertheless expects to fare even better among Latino voters in 2024, and recent polling suggests none of his recent antics have hurt him with Latino voters at all.
There are a variety of possible explanations for this, but a New York Times report published this week raised an important point about public perception:
Many [Latino voters the Times spoke to were] unfamiliar with Mr. Trump’s platform, including his plans to round up undocumented people on a mass scale and to detain them in camps pending their deportation. Many Latino Republicans and independents who had heard of such campaign pledges did not believe that Mr. Trump would be able to fulfill his promises.
In other words, these Latino voters are well aware of the fact that Trump says he wants militarized mass deportations and detention camps, but they don’t believe he’ll actually follow through on such a policy.
It’s a position that effectively says, “I’ll vote for the guy because I assume he’s lying.”
If you spend enough time online you’ll probably see references to the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party. This summary is as good as any: “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party refers to a parody of regretful voters who vote for cruel and unjust policies (and politicians) and are then surprised when their own lives become worse as a result.”
It appears to have started in 2015 with someone who wrote, “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
It came to mind reading about voters who oppose mass deportations but who nevertheless plan to vote for the candidate running on a platform of mass deportations. Stepping back, there’s a larger phenomenon to keep in mind. For many years, focus group participants have expressed great skepticism when confronted with accurate information about Republican policies. Provided with the truth, many voters found it impossible to believe that GOP proposals were real because the measures simply sounded too radical. As New York magazine’s Jon Chait summarized several years ago, focus group participants have received facts about Republican plans, but the truth “struck those voters as so cartoonishly evil that they found the charge implausible.” If the Times’ report is accurate, many Latino voters are responding to Trump’s deportation plans the same way. “It’s all just campaign talk,” they apparently assume. “It won’t be that bad.” For all the talk about Americans being cynical, sometimes they’re not quite cynical enough. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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