Watch RNC Hispanic Media Spokeswoman Repeatedly Dodge Questions About Current GOP Divisions
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the June 19 edition of Telemundo's Enfoque:
Translated from Spanish (emphasis added):
JOSÉ DÍAZ-BALART (HOST): Helen, is there a division within the Republican Party?
HELEN AGUIRRE FERRÉ: José, what we are seeing is that the party is uniting and is looking for a path to the convention, which is important to point out. And what we are seeing is that what is uniting us all is the concern that Hillary Clinton could perhaps be the president of the United States, and that is something that unites everyone who wants to stop that from happening. Hillary Clinton who complains about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms as a mechanism to stop terrorism, we see that she has been one of the proponents of the failed policies that have brought about what the CIA director says now that ISIS, the largest Islamic terrorist group in the world today, has grown thanks to -- he doesn’t say thanks to the policies, but we are seeing that because of the vacuum that occurred in Libya and Syria, particularly. Stronger than Al Qaeda. I think this has been something very worrying and we also see her proposing economic policies that have particularly damaged the Hispanic community and we need a new path to take ourselves out of what has been a policy failure of the last eight years. We need a new path and this is going to happen through the Republican Party.
DÍAZ-BALART: Helen, let me then repeat the question with a few statistics for context. The question was if there is division within the Republican Party. For example, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said this Sunday to my colleague Chuck Todd that he has said to the other members of Congress that this is a different election year, that Trump is a different candidate and therefore they say that what they think about him, independently if they are going to support him or not. That seems to me to justify the question, is there a division within the Republican Party?
AGUIRRE FERRÉ: What Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said is that he is a unique candidate and there is no one who can doubt that, that that's certainly the case. And that he is not going to stop anyone from voting against their conscience. This is very normal, it is nothing different. Trying to impose that someone votes differently from their conscience, I think would be an aberration. And everyone has to make their own decision in this campaign, and that’s not any different from any other year in that sense. The Republican Party, I’ll repeat, is united to defeat Hillary Clinton and that is what unites us all.
DÍAZ-BALART: But, they are not necessarily united behind Donald Trump. You yourself have had discrepancies in the past with Donald Trump. There was a time when you had some tweets that after that day were deleted from your Twitter account. Do you have any concern or difficulty with representing the Republican Party when the leader of this party is Donald Trump?
AGUIRRE FERRÉ: Look, the Republican Party is the job of the Republican National Committee, José, and we support all of the Republican candidates. I am proud to belong to the Republican party there is no doubt that we are united behind defeating Hillary Clinton, and I can tell you something, José, that I haven’t done anything to delete anything that has to do -- a tweet or emails that has to do with national security like Hillary Clinton did, who is now under an FBI criminal investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So, I think it has to be made very clear that we are united and we are certainly in support of any Republican candidate.
DÍAZ-BALART: Including Donald Trump?
AGUIRRE FERRÉ: If Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party there will be an effort to give him the push to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Previously:
RNC's Newest Hispanic Outreach Director Scrubs Tweets Warning About Dangers Of Trump
What The RNC's Newest Hispanic Outreach Director Used To Tell Hispanic Media About Trump
Alex Castellanos: “Forget Never Trump. This Is About Never Hillary”