Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are spending Tuesday taking different approaches to appealing to Latino voters as the 2024 presidential election draws to a close.
In an interview with Telemundo on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Harris plans to highlight how her agenda would create more opportunities for Latino men — a strategy born out of roughly a dozen focus groups and polling.
Trump, meanwhile, hosted a roundtable at his Miami-area golf club with Latino elected officials and business leaders, where he made the case that his presidency was much better for the Hispanic community than that of President Joe Biden, his successor.
The Trump and Harris campaigns see what could be an election-deciding opportunity with Latino men, who could swing the outcome in states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. Trump believes he's made inroads with the Latino community, while Harris' campaign is looking to shore up support.
According to a recent New York Times-Siena College poll, Harris still leads Trump among Latino voters, 56-37, though support for Republicans among the crucial voting bloc has grown since 2016.
Former President Trump, joined by several business leaders and elected officials who are Latino, offered familiar lines of attack against Vice President Harris as he sought to make the case that his administration, not Biden's, was better for Hispanic Americans.
Trump attacked Harris' intellect in crude terms, calling her "low IQ" and "slow" and sought to rebut her campaign's attacks against his physical fitness after canceling several interviews, attacking her over her schedule Tuesday – which includes two interviews and other meetings in Washington after a three-state swing through the "blue wall" battleground states on Monday.
“She’s sleeping right now,” Trump charged, while also accusing her of being "lazy as hell."
“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left?” he added. "She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell.”
Trump also railed against the release of top-secret documents purporting to detail Israel's plans to attack Iran, blaming "the enemy from within," using rhetoric he's employed recently to describe Democratic critics, while also making claims that solar fields are harmful to rabbits.
He also touched on his administration's support for Latinos, and offered praise to Goya CEO Bob Unanue, a vocal supporter of his administration.
"It’s actually quite good out of the can," Trump said of Goya's products, claiming: "I eat it whenever I can."
The event ended with a prayer, with supporters surrounding Trump, putting their hands on him and asking to "make America godly again."
In an interview with Telemundo on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Harris plans to highlight how her agenda would create more opportunities for Latino men — a strategy born out of roughly a dozen focus groups and polling.
The Democratic nominee intends to show off her plans to double the number of registered apprenticeships. She wants to stress how she would remove college degree requirements for certain federal government jobs and encourage private employers to do likewise. And Harris wants to provide forgivable loans worth up to $20,000 each to 1 million small businesses.
In a close race, the Harris campaign is betting that Latino men are getting more attuned to policy specifics as the election draws closer.
”We are very confident that these policies resonate because we’ve seen them resonate in speeches and focus groups,” said Matt Barreto, a Harris campaign pollster. “It speaks to Latino men in particular about being successful and achieving the American dream.”
Based on focus groups, Barreto said the Harris campaign found that Latino men in particular wanted access to apprenticeships that could give people without college degrees access to a financially stable career.
The latest Labor Department figures show there are 641,044 registered apprenticeships, an increase from the Trump administration, when apprenticeships peaked in 2020 at 569,311. Doubling that figure as Harris has proposed would put the total number of apprenticeships at roughly 1.2 million over four years.
Latino men also expressed a need for access to capital and credit to start companies, as the Treasury Department reported on Oct. 10 that Latino business ownership is up 40% over pre-pandemic levels and could keep climbing with better financing options.
Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will be on Univision’s El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo, a syndicated radio show, this week, while Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will be interviewed this week by Univision’s nationally syndicated afternoon radio show, El Free-Guey Show. Emhoff will also be interviewed by Alex “El Genio” Lucas on Nueva Network Radio.