Hannity Hosts Anti-Immigrant Voices To Misrepresent The Hispanic Electorate And Hype Trump’s Wall Plan

Written by Media Matters Staff

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While appearing as guests on Fox News’ Hannity, anti-immigrant advocates Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and columnist A.J. Delgado left important context out of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s plan to block immigrant remittances to finance his border wall and misrepresented the Latino electorate to claim that Trump is going to “do better than other Republicans with Hispanic voters.”

Hispanic media has previously documented Kobach’s career-long history of startling attacks on Latinos, and Kobach has taken credit for inspiring Trump’s plan to force Mexico to pay for a border wall by blocking remittances that Mexicans depend on to survive. Despite the plan being harshly criticized for being “not feasible,” possibly illegal, and “a mistake” that would “choke” the economy of a “key ally” like Mexico, Trump sycophant Sean Hannity congratulated Kobach on his success in including the border wall plan in the Republican Party platform. Kobach also said “the American people want” a wall, a claim that polls have contradicted by showing that 62 percent of Americans oppose building a border wall.

Hannity also lauded conservative columnist and Trump surrogate Delgado for predicting “from the beginning” that Trump would win the Hispanic vote, ignoring the fact that Delgado has pushed false information about the Latino electorate in the past.

The most recent polls have shown that Trump is still far behind Hillary Clinton in terms of the Hispanic vote, yet right-wing media figures have been hyping this as a win because they claim that Trump's support among Latinos is better than that received by former Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain. The Washington Post pointed out that this claim is misleading because Trump’s numbers are almost equal to Romney’s numbers in June of 2012. To claim that Trump is ‘“way above’ Romney and McCain is a reference to where they ended up in exit polls,” which is “comparing apples to oranges”. From the July 13 edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Kris is on the Republican Platform Committee and pushed for the language about the wall to be included. Good job, sir. So it's in there?

KRIS KOBACH: Yeah, it's in there, and it's subject to final approval on Monday, but I'm sure it will remain in there. You know, the reason I chose that language and the committee approved it, Sean, is this has to be a real wall. You know, we've had acts of Congress in the past that have been disregarded by the executive, and they put things in the ground like sensors and they put things overhead like drones. But we're talking about a real physical barrier here from sea to shining sea, and the American people want it, and the Republican Party is steadfastly in favor of it now.

HANNITY: Yeah, you know, A.J. Delgado, you have been such a strong, articulate, passionate Trump supporter from the very beginning. And you have been saying and now the polls bare this out to be true. Donald Trump is going to do better than other Republicans with Hispanic voters. Recent polls show that, in fact, yes he is doing better with Hispanic voters than, say, Mitt Romney or John McCain. Why do you think that is?

A.J. DELGADO: Absolutely. And that's because Latinos, Sean, we are law-abiding, orderly, law-loving people. And we do just want immigration enforcement. We don't want to have to compete with illegal immigrants for our jobs, and we want to be safe. We want our children to be safe. Especially those Latinos, the many Latinos that live along the border. We also want to make sure, it's a big problem in our community, that something is done about the drug problem in the U.S. You have heroin, cocaine, this poison that comes across the border by the truckload. And so what Donald Trump is doing with this wall, and thanks to patriots like Mr. Kobach, we're finally pushing back and doing something about that problem that nobody wants to discuss.

HANNITY: A.J., did you see the interview or read any of the comments of Jeb Bush that he made this week? Oh, Trump's never going to build that wall. And I'm like, yeah, I think he's going to build the wall. I believe it.

DELGADO: It absolutely will happen. And as Mr. Kobach has laid out in his plans, it could easily happen by limiting the remittances that illegal immigrants who are here from Mexico can send back to Mexico. We tell Mexico that's either going to stop or you're going to have to pay 5, 10 billion dollars, whatever amount we determine is appropriate, towards that wall. It's their choice. It could be very, done very easily, and it will be done.

HANNITY: All right, Kris, I'll give you the last word.

KOBACH: Yeah, I think if you look at the platform now, Sean, it's not just the wall but the party is now standing firmly and favor of enforcing our laws, rejecting the Obama amnesty, and bringing back the rule of law. And now you have on the other side the Democrats who are doubling down on the executive amnesty. They want more amnesty. They stand for lawlessness and open borders. The American public now has a choice like no other choice. The Republican party is standing firmly for the rule of law. The Democrats for the opposite. And I think Trump's going to win, in part, because of that.