by Jorge Ramos
As always, Dax had done his homework. He had studied all the press conferences Trump had scheduled for the coming weeks, and the one in Iowa represented the best opportunity to meet him face-to-face. Appearances in places such as New York City would be packed with reporters, but not many news organizations would be sending their teams to cover an event in Dubuque, Iowa. Once again, Dax was right.
We contacted Trump’s campaign, presented our credentials to attend the press conference in Dubuque on August 26, 2015, and though we feared the worst, nobody prohibited us from attending.
Around that same time we received a call from William Finnegan, a correspondent for The New Yorker, who wanted to do an article about my exchange with Trump. I invited him to join us in Iowa, and he immediately agreed. I didn’t know what was going to happen there, but my intent was not to leave without confronting Trump one way or another.
I was well equipped with questions.
Trump’s immigration policy would result in one of the largest mass deportations in modern history. How was he planning on deporting eleven million undocumented immigrants?
If he could amend the Constitution to strip citizenship from the children of undocumented parents, where would he be sending infants and children who had neither a country nor a passport?
Why build the largest wall on earth between two countries—1,954 miles long—if more than 40 percent of undocumented people either come by plane or overstay their visas? Wouldn’t this be a monumental waste of time, money, and effort?
With these questions in hand, I left for Iowa. We arrived on-site about two hours before the press conference was scheduled to begin. We registered and set up two cameras; I sat at one end of the front row so that nothing would obstruct our view of one another, and I was wired with a microphone so that the exchange would be clearly recorded. Technically speaking, we were ready.
Television doesn’t just happen. You have to create it.
But it was also important to have a plan for Trump. The first thing I decided was that I would ask my questions while standing, not seated. Body language would be vital here. I didn’t want Trump to have any advantages over me. It had to be an equal exchange between the two of us. If I stood up to ask my questions, it would be that much harder for him to ignore me.
We also knew of Trump’s tendency to interrupt reporters before they finish asking their questions. So I decided that I would just keep talking, refusing to be cut off, until I was through. At least with the first one.
I was ready. I had my microphone in hand and a plan to face Trump.
All of a sudden, a door opened in the back of the conference room and the security team entered, followed by Trump himself. The place fell into an unusual state of silence. The candidate greeted everyone rather unenthusiastically, barely audible, even, and then scanned the room with his eyes, as if he were taking an X-ray.
I know that kind of person. Street-smart, as you say in English. After years of interacting with people at public events, they have developed a special intuition they can use to detect both threats and opportunities. In a matter of seconds, Trump was able to identify the cameras and the reporters who were there to cover him.
He walked slowly, took his place behind the podium, gave a terse, formulaic speech, and pointed at a Fox News reporter to ask the first question. There was a single person in charge of this situation, and that person was Donald Trump.
The reporter, having been identified, asked his question. The candidate responded. And there, in that rhythm that seeks to establish itself from the outset, I detected a pause, however brief. Trump’s last words were hanging in the air, and none of the other reporters were willing to jump across that void. Trump could give someone permission to speak, and he could take it away. I suppose it was something of a rite that had been established between the candidate and the elite group that had been covering his campaign for a little over two months now. Nobody wanted to shake up the rules of the game that benefited both candidate and journalists alike.
But I was new to this group. I wasn’t privy to their rhythms and rituals. Plus, I had participated in hundreds of press conferences throughout my career, and I knew that you don’t always have to wait for someone else to cede the floor to you. It’s important to understand the pauses that inevitably arise in any exchange between people and strike quickly.
Of course, my intention coming in was to confront Trump, and it would be too risky to wait until the end of the press conference to ask my questions. We didn’t know how much time Trump would give us, but it was clear that there were thousands of people waiting to see him at a campaign rally. So when I saw my opportunity, I took it.
I raised my hand, stood up from my seat, and said I had a question about immigration. I was expecting some sort of reaction, but at first nobody said anything. Not even the candidate. It was as if everyone in the room had been caught off guard. The strategy, I thought, was working, and I went ahead with my question.
But I didn’t simply want to ask a question. I wanted to let Trump know that many Latinos and other immigrants were offended by his racist comments and that his own immigration proposals were based on falsehoods. After all, that’s why we had gone all the way to Iowa.
But Trump is an old dog. He noticed two of the first words out of my mouth were “empty promises,” and not much good was going to come after that. So without recognizing me or even looking in my direction, he scanned the hundreds of journalists in front of him, looking for someone to call on. To Trump, I didn’t even exist.
In Spanish, we have a word that perfectly describes this attitude of contempt: ningunear. The people in power scorn, snub, or completely disregard the others. The intention is to literally turn someone into no one. And that’s what Trump was trying to do with me. He didn’t want to hear me or even see me.
He could have let me ask my question and given a quick, terse answer, thus disarming me. But his pride prevented him from doing that. He wouldn’t be satisfied with simply denying me the opportunity to ask a question: he wanted to humiliate me, to make me an example to other reporters going forward.
But I was mentally prepared for Trump. I ignored him and continued to ask my lengthy question. I admit, it wasn’t a short, simple one. I wanted to get his lies on the record first and then proceed with the questions.
Visibly upset, Trump then made a mistake. He simply couldn’t allow a reporter to challenge him instead of following orders. It was then that he decided to resort to the use of force.
What follows is my first exchange with Trump:
“Mr. Trump, I have a question about immigration.”
“Okay, who is next?…Yes, please, please.” Trump was avoiding making eye contact with me while he looked for someone else to call on.
“Your immigration plan is full of empty promises.”
“Excuse me. Sit down! You weren’t called. Sit down! Sit down!” The strategy of standing up to ask the question seemed to be working. He wanted me to take a seat, but I was not about to do so.
“No, I’m a reporter.”
“Sit down!”
“And as an immigrant and a U.S. citizen I have the right to ask a question. And the question is this.”
“No, you don’t. You haven’t been called.” At least Trump was listening to me now, I thought, so I continued to press ahead.
“No. I have the right to ask a question…”
“Go back to Univision.”
“No, this is the question…”
“Go ahead,” Trump said, addressing the reporter from CBS News instead of me.
“You cannot deport eleven million people. You cannot build a nineteen-hundred-mile wall. You cannot deny citizenship to children in this country…”
“Sit down!”
“And with those ideas…”
“You weren’t called.”
“I’m a reporter…” I countered.
Trump, first with a strange movement of his mouth, followed by one with his arms, called in one of his bodygua
rds. The man strode across the room, stopped in front of me, and grabbed me by my left forearm before dragging me out of the room.
“Don’t touch me, sir,” I said.
The security officer said I was being “disruptive” and that I should wait my turn to ask a question. But I insisted that as a reporter, I had the right to do so. He asked to see my credentials, and I said that they were with my briefcase next to my seat. I also kept telling him not to touch me, but he didn’t care. He kept on shoving me and didn’t release my forearm until we were out of the room.
Just then, one of Trump’s supporters—campaign button and all—followed me out of the conference room and confronted me.
“You are very rude. It’s not about you,” he said, jabbing his finger at me.
“It’s not about you, either,” I said. My mind was still on the incident with Trump and his security guard. There were many things I could have said, but there, in the moment, I decided not to focus my indignation at this supporter. He, however, was insistent:
“Get out of my country. Get out! This is not about you.”
“I’m also a U.S. citizen.”
“Well, whatever. No. Univision, no. It’s not about you.”
“It’s not about you. It’s about the United States.”
A police officer who overheard our conversation stepped in between us. And that was the end of our exchange of words.
* * *
—
My producer, Dax Tejera, and I had to decide what to do next. Trump would have to walk out the same door I exited, and one of my cameramen was ready in case I wanted to approach the candidate a second time.
I decided not to leave. I had gone to Iowa to talk to Trump, and I would try again outside the conference room.
After I was forcibly expelled, two other reporters—Kasie Hunt of MSNBC and Tom Llamas of ABC News—came to my defense and challenged Trump hard. Why did he have me kicked out of the press conference?
“I don’t know really much about him,” he told them. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, except he started screaming. I didn’t escort him out. You have to talk to security; whoever security is has escorted him out. But certainly he was not chosen. I chose you, I chose other people. He just stands up and starts screaming. So, you know, maybe he’s at fault also. I don’t even know where he is. I don’t mind if he comes back, frankly.”
It was quite telling that Trump told the members of the press that he didn’t know who I was. After all, he had published my letter online just two months earlier. Besides, during our exchange in the conference room, he had specifically told me to “go back to Univision.” If he truly didn’t know who I was, how did he know who I worked for?
The answer is that Trump was lying.
All of a sudden, his press secretary came out of the room. “Hi, I’m Hope Hicks,” she said, waving to me. She asked if I would like to go back into the conference, and I said yes. But I cautioned her that my one condition was that I be allowed to ask my questions. She agreed and asked me to wait until Trump gave me the floor.
I went back into the conference room. I never found out whether it was her decision to let me back in or if she made the move only when she heard what the candidate said after I was escorted out.
I returned to my seat, which was still empty. My briefcase with my press credentials was still there as well. I raised my hand to ask a question, and—as if by following some sort of magical choreography—Trump pointed to me and said, “Yes, good, absolutely. Good to have you back.”
The exchange we then had went unnoticed by most news networks. The headlines around the world would be about how I was forcibly expelled from a press conference by one of his bodyguards, not about our conversation after the fact.
Finally, I had my chance to confront Trump. What follows is the central tenet of our conversation, edited so that the exchange can be better understood:
“So here’s the problem with your immigration plan. It’s full of empty promises. You cannot deport eleven million undocumented immigrants. You cannot deny citizenship to the children [of undocumented parents] of this country.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You have to change the Constitution, Mr. Trump.”
“Well, a lot of people think that an act of Congress can do it. Now it’s possibly going to have to be tested in courts….[If] a woman is getting ready to have a baby, she crosses the border for one day and has the baby, all of a sudden for the next eighty years we have to take care of the people.”
“The Constitution [says that].”
“No, no, no. I don’t think so. I know some of the television scholars agree with you. But some of the great legal scholars agree that’s not true.”
“You are not answering, Mr. Trump.”
“I am answering….It’s going to be tested, okay?”
“Anyway, the question is, how are you going to build a nineteen-hundred-mile wall?”
“Very easy. I’m a builder. That’s easy. I build buildings that are ninety-four stories. Can I tell you what’s more complicated? What’s more complicated is building a building that’s ninety-five stories tall, okay?”
“But it’s an unnecessary waste of time and money.”
“You think so? Really? I don’t think so….”
“Almost forty percent of the [undocumented] immigrants come by plane, they simply overstay their visas.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it….”
“Well, they are coming by plane.”
“Well, they are coming by many different ways. But the primary way they’re coming is right through, right past our border patrols.”
“How are you going to deport eleven million undocumented immigrants? By bus? Are you going to bring the army?”
“Let me tell you. We’re going to do it in a very humane fashion. Believe me. I’ve got a bigger heart than you do….The one thing we are going to start with immediately are the gangs and the real bad ones….We have tremendous crime, we have tremendous problems….Those people are out. They’re going to be out so fast your head will spin. Remember you used the word ‘illegal’ immigrant?”
“No, I did not use that word.”
“Well, you should use the word because that’s what the definition is.”
“No human being is illegal.”
“Okay, well, when they cross the border, from the legal standpoint, they are illegal immigrants when they don’t have their papers.”
“How do you deport eleven million?”
“You know what it’s called? Management. See, you’re not used to good management because you are always talking about government.”
“Just imagine—”
“Let me just tell you. Wait, wait, wait. Government is incompetent.”
“You are not giving specifics.”
“I’ve given you specifics. I’ve given you specifics. Great management.”
But the exchange did not end there. Other reporters asked their questions, and then I raised my hand again. Trump, apparently, was willing to continue the debate. I stood up and began, once more:
“You are not going to win the Latino vote.”
“I think so, because I’m going to bring jobs back.”
“The truth is—I’ve seen the polls—a Univision poll that says seventy-five percent of Latinos—”
Here is where he interrupted me. Instead of acknowledging that several polls indicated that he was losing the Latino vote, he brought up the lawsuit he had filed against Univision.
“How much am I suing Univision for right now? Do you know the number? Tell me.”
“The question is—”
“Do you know the number? How much am I suing Univision for?”
“I’m a reporter, Mr. Trump.”
“Five hundred million.”
“I’m a reporter and the question is—”
“And they’re very concerned about it, I have to say.”
“So allow me to ask the quest
ion.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re losing the Latino vote.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Seventy-five percent of Latinos have a negative opinion of you. Gallup considers you the most unpopular candidate of all [Republicans]. Just check social media.”
“Do you know how many Latinos work for me? Do you know how many Hispanics are working for me?”
“Many Latinos detest you and despise you, Mr. Trump.”
“They love me.”
“That is not true. See the polls, Mr. Trump.”
“Do you know how many Hispanics work for me? Thousands.”
“Nationwide, seventy-five percent [of Latinos] have a negative opinion of you. You won’t win the White House without the Latino vote.”
“Here’s what happens. Once I win you’re going to see things happen. You know what they want? They want jobs. That’s what they want.”
“And they want to be treated fairly.”
This conversation was going nowhere. I was citing poll numbers that showed his huge unpopularity among Latino voters, and he was insisting that Latinos loved him and that thousands work for him.
At that time, I was convinced that nobody could win the White House without a significant portion of the Latino vote. Mitt Romney earned only 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012, paving the way for Barack Obama’s reelection. And years earlier, in the 2008 presidential election, Senator John McCain also lost to Barack Obama, having garnered only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Everything seemed to indicate that the Republican candidate, whoever it might be, would be barely able to reach a third of the Latino vote, which would not be enough to win the presidency. In 2016, there were 27.3 million registered Latino voters, and even though only about half of them were expected to cast ballots, their influence would be definitive. Or so I thought.
After my exchange with Trump at the press conference, the candidate wanted to continue the debate.
“You and I will talk. We’re going to be talking a lot, Jorge Ramos.”
“I hope that we can have that conversation.”
“We will. We will.”
“Okay.”