RNC tries to mend relationship with Hispanic voters

The Republican National Committee is taking steps to mend the party's fraught relationship with the Hispanic community after Donald Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric set back prior efforts to win over Latino voters.

The RNC on Tuesday kicked off a social media campaign with a pair of videos, the first in its series “GOP Hispanics: The week ahead.” The videos, one in Spanish and another in English, laid out the standard Republican message on terrorism and foreign policy. It also repeated the party’s regular lines of attack against President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.


The 44-second video wraps with RNC Director of Hispanic Communications Helen Aguirre-Ferré offering praise for Trump, the only time his name is mentioned.

“Donald Trump wants the U.S. to lead and be respected,” Aguirre-Ferré says in the English-language video. “Peace through strength. Yes, I am for Trump.”

According to the release, the new campaign will also reach out to Hispanic voters on a variety of other issues, including job creation, education, veteran support and immigration.

While the GOP reaches out to Hispanic voters, its presidential candidate is struggling mightily with them. Trump built much of his primary campaign on a foundation of anti-immigrant rhetoric, pledging to build a wall along America’s southern border and promising that Mexico will pay for it. At his Trump Tower campaign launch in June 2015, the Manhattan billionaire attacked immigrants arriving from Mexico as criminals, a line that has followed him into the general election even as he has worked to temper his rhetoric.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

In a Fox News Latino poll conducted earlier this month, 66 percent of registered Hispanic voters reached said they would vote for Clinton or are leaning her way, while just 20 percent said the same of Trump.

“As we at the RNC continue to deepen our commitment to engaging with the Hispanic community, we are expanding our efforts in social media to generate greater conversation and understanding of what the Republican Party stands for,” GOP Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement announcing the campaign’s launch.

The Democratic National Committee panned the effort, saying it won't be enough to rebuild a bridge Democrats contend Trump has already burned.

"No amount of social media is going to make up for a standard-bearer who calls Mexicans immigrants 'rapists'; who thinks a federal judge can’t do his job because of his Mexican heritage; and who wants to deport all undocumented immigrants," DNC spokesman Walter Garcia said.