Right Opinion Jorge Ramos: Activist Masquerading as a Journalist

One can be excused if he thought he witnessed a heckler, not a reporter, being ejected from a recent Donald Trump press conference.

Jorge Ramos, a so-called “journalist,” works for Univision, and has more than two million nightly viewers. He told Trump, “I have the right to ask a question.” Trump repeatedly told him to sit down, saying, “No, you haven’t been called. Go back to Univision.”

He asked Trump the following “question”: “You cannot deport 11 million people. You cannot build a 1,900-mile wall. You cannot deny citizenship to children.” That was, at best, a series of statements. At worst, it was a rant.

To his credit, Trump invited Ramos back into the press conference. They engaged in a nearly four-minute exchange during which Ramos informed Trump that “no human being is illegal.”

Ramos is from Mexico, but came to America in his 20s on a student visa. Some 25 years later, in 2008, he became an American citizen. Question: Did he live for any period of time in America illegally? Is he also a citizen of Mexico? According to a 1997 amendment to the constitution of Mexico, anyone born in Mexico remains a Mexican citizen, even after they become naturalized citizens of another country, including the U.S. Even the foreign-born children of Mexican natives can retain their Mexican citizenship.

Does he vote in both countries? Apparently, yes. Ramos wrote in 2012: “I’ve never ceased to be Mexican. I have two passports, and I vote in elections in both countries. I’m deeply proud of this privileged duality. The best thing about America is its embrace of diversity. The worst thing about America, of course, is the racist and xenophobic attitudes that tend to emerge now and then.”

When Ramos “interviewed” Ann Coulter about her new book “Adios America,” he promised her an “honest debate.” But he began with the following “question”: “Your numbers are wrong.” Ramos proceeded to inform Coulter that her assertion that there were 30 million illegal aliens in the country — not the 10 or 11 million that is often claimed — was “wrong.” The accuracy of Coulter’s number of 30 million is, of course, a legitimate issue. But reporters ask questions. Activists make arguments.

And we thought MSNBC’s “journalist” Chris Matthews was bad. Recall after Barack Obama’s election in 2008, a gleeful Matthews said, “I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work. … It is my job. My job is to help this country … to make this work successfully. This country needs a successful presidency.” Ramos makes Matthews look, pardon the expression, “fair and balanced.”

Ramos once said, “I finally recognized that I cannot be defined by one country. I am from both countries. It took me many years to make peace with that thought, and that I was never going back to Mexico.”

Tell that to President Theodore Roosevelt, who said: “We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.

"If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American.

"We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

By that definition Ramos is neither an American nor a journalist.

COPYRIGHT 2015 LAURENCE A. ELDER

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