Latino Americans for Trump launches at Las Vegas rally as Biden Hispanic outreach continues

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has rebranded and launched their new Hispanic outreach organization at a political rally that took place in Las Vegas on Sunday.

The organization, which waited until five months before election day to launch, changed its name Latinos for Trump to Latino Americans for Trump, according to Jaime Florez, the Hispanic Communications Director for both the campaign and the Republican National Committee.

“It’s very important that we all understand that no matter where we’re coming from, we’re already American,” Florez said, according to a report published by NBC Latino before the Sunday rally. “Whether you’re African American, Latino American, Asian American, European American, wherever you come from, we are all American.”

Latino Americans for Trump

The new name was an idea that developed during conference calls and meetings, he added.

“We as Latinos want to be treated as what we are. We are already American. This is our country,” Florez said. “We came here to stay, we came here to pursue our American dream, we have our families here, and we have our future in the United States ... Trump gave us the opportunity to feel more united with the idea of working together to make America great again.”

In addition to holding rallies like the Sunday kickoff in Las Vegas, the campaign is planning to launch digital, TV and radio ads in both Spanish and English. 

Campaign officials have long said they were waiting for the conclusion of Trump’s criminal trial in New York to expand some of their minority outreach efforts. 

The new launch also comes in the wake of the Republican Party closing several community and minority outreach offices, according to an April 27 report published by the Associated Press. Trump reportedly closed his Hispanic outreach office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin after the 2022 midterm elections and in Allentown, Pennsylvania in January 2023. Other minority offices, such as an Asian American outreach location was shuttered in Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The campaign also suffered a loss after it lost its national coalitions director, Derek Silver, in March. Silver had been hired in October after Trump expressed the importance of focusing on the defection of minority voters from the Democratic Party.

“Traditionally, Republicans have not been effective in their efforts to persuade Black and Hispanic voters to vote for our party,” said Lynne Patton, a senior adviser on the campaign who spoke to the AP in late April.

“But this is yet another reason why President Trump was adamant that his hand-picked leadership team assume control at the RNC and spearhead a unified effort to embrace the historic defection being witnessed within Black & Hispanic communities from the Democrat party and ensure it’s permanent.”

Latinos con Biden

The Trump Latino-American outreach coalition launch comes several months after the Biden campaign started its own Hispanic outreach organization, Latinos con Biden. The organization has reportedly invested in contributing to campaign events with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

At a March 19 rally in Phoenix, the president conceded the Democratic Party was losing its edge with the Latino community, telling Hispanics in Arizona, “I need you back.”

The event, which took place at a packed Mexican restaurant in the state’s capital city, drew dozens of Biden supporters whom the president spoke to candidly. While there, he said the race was between “me and a guy named Trump,” illuminating the former president’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

Biden focused on Trump’s early 2016 rhetoric that said Latino migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” to saying his term in office proved “he wants to get rid of all the programs we put together.”

Biden’s Hispanic outreach organization has also raised money for ads in Spanish, English and even Spanglish.

Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign has been critical and skeptical about Trump’s efforts to rally the Latino vote. The Biden campaign’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado, took aim at Trump’s Sunday launch in Las Vegas and highlighted the former president’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

“All we saw today, was a wannabe dictator spouting his trademark for hatred in our community,” he said in a statement.

While the Biden campaign continues to try and highlight Trump’s rhetoric about immigration, a CBS News poll released on Sunday said that 62% of registered voters nationwide support a program to “deport all documented immigrants.”

The Washington Post noted on Monday, that such “sweeping promises to deport millions of immigrants already in the country would still be massively disruptive and difficult to carry out.”

Both campaigns moving forward for November 2024

The biggest challenge the president may have moving forward among the Hispanic community is some criticism he has taken for the recent executive order he signed, which will limit the number of migrants who can apply for asylum at the southwest border. Still, CBS reported that 70% of registered voters approved of the move.

Trump will also face some challenges since his rhetoric has vacillated on issues that concern Hispanic Americans. While some issues such as tackling crime and economy appeal to Hispanic Americans, he has also said that migrants coming to the U.S. are “killing” social security.

While both presidential campaigns continue to court the Hispanic vote, the Trump campaign said their efforts will not isolate the Latino-American component of their efforts from other staffers.

Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez told NBC Latino that the campaign, “has hundreds of staff and dozens of offices throughout the country to harness the energy and movement President Trump has created, and  ultimately deliver victory in November,” adding that the staff in different states have not been divided to court different voters.

The rationale she said, is that many issues such as the economy impact everyone, not just one group.

Republican strategist Alice Stewart, a veteran of several GOP campaigns, told the AP in April that she is confident the Trump campaign will ultimately do what is necessary. 

“But the key is they can’t just talk about minority outreach,” she said. “They have to do it.”