Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos used the opportunity of being a guest on CBS's Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Thursday night to criticize Donald Trump's use of the term “bad hombres” during his final debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton on Wednesday.
The GOP candidate for president used the phrase while discussing his views on illegal immigration, which led Colbert to call Trump a “loco hombre” before discussing Ramos's new documentary, Hate Rising, to explore the Republican campaign's “connection to racism and white nationalism.”
After being introduced by Colbert as “an Emmy Award-winning anchor,” Ramos began by telling the host: “Don't say 'bad hombre,' please.”
“Let me ask you about that,” the host responded. “Is it like, people were surprised he said 'bad hombre?' Is that a bad thing to say?”
“It's a stereotype,” the guest replied.
“It just means 'bad man,' right?” Colbert asked.
“The immigrant community is full of 'buenos hombres,' not 'bad hombres,'” Ramos said to applause from the audience.
“We have here, running for president, we have a 'loco hombre,'” the host joked.
“You can't say stuff like that because you're a journalist,” Colbert added.
“Not like that,” Ramos replied, “but I can confront Trump.”
The liberal comedian then noted: “You did confront Trump [on] August 15 last year. You got tossed out of his press conference. What happened? What did you do?”
The newsman replied that he sent Trump “a handwritten note and my cell phone number asking for an interview. And then I learned my first lesson, which is you should never, ever give your cell phone number to Donald Trump” because “he published it on the Internet.”
“So two months later, I went to Dubuque, Iowa,” Ramos added. “He had a press conference, and we have all these questions to ask him. He wants to build a wall, he wants to deport 11 million. So I raised my hand and asked a question, and he didn't like it.”
“He called his bodyguard, and he ejected me from his press conference,” the newsman continued. “The only other person who prevented me from asking a question with a bodyguard was Fidel Castro a few years before.”
The audience then gasped, and Ramos noted: “It’s a true story.”
“Are there similarities between the two of them?” Colbert asked.
“Well, yes, of course,” the guest responded. “They don’t like the press. They use a bodyguard to throw you out of places.”
“Was there any relief,” Colbert inquired, “like 'I get to leave this press conference?'”
“No,” Ramos replied, “because after that he realized that he had made a mistake, … he allowed me to go back, and then we started asking questions; we had a back-and-forth on all the things he wanted to do.”
The Univision anchor then noted: “He wants to deport 11 million people. That's absurdity, that's insane, that's a horror. … Can you imagine, that's deporting 50,000 people every single day?”
Ramos then joked that Trump “can start a new airline with that” using a motto of “Trump Airlines, We'll Send You Back.”
Colbert then asked: “Do you think Trump is an anomaly with what many are calling racist language that he uses, or do you think he's just the expression of something that is already existing in our culture?”
His guest replied:
He has allowed white extremist groups and neo-Nazis to express their opinions and prejudices that before they were only saying to themselves in their parties or their bedrooms.
Now it's outside, it's all over the place.
The discussion then turned to the news anchor's documentary, in which he interviewed the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who told him: “White is so much higher that any other race.”
“How can you say that, based on what?” Ramos asked.
“Based on God,” the man responded. “We're God's people. … That's not racism, that's fact.”
“He didn't want to touch me,” the anchor continued. “He told me that just because he's White and I'm Latino, and he's superior to me.”
“Talking about white supremacists, I also went to Ohio, and there were about 30 neo-Nazis, and they were burning a swastika,” Ramos stated.
“The producer and director, they wouldn't let me talk for three hours” because “it was not safe. First of all, they didn't make small talk with white supremacists. You don't ask: 'What's your favorite color?'”
“I think we know the answer to that one,” Colbert quipped.
“So it was dangerous for me to be there and for them to notice that I had an accent,” Ramos stated.
“Stay safe and thanks for being here,” Colbert said to conclude the interview.
It looks like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore now has competition when it comes to spreading opinions and prejudices on the extreme left of the political spectrum.
