Continuing its "Free of Fear" video series, the Republican National Committee is releasing another conversation — previewed exclusively by Townhall — with several RNC staffers for whom the issues affecting the Hispanic community are personal.
"Free of Fear Part II" goes beyond the stories RNC staff shared in the first installment to look at what the Biden administration's actions — or lack thereof — and policies have meant to Hispanic Americans who are increasingly dissatisfied with the president's performance overall.
The latest polling from Quinnipiac shows 51 percent of Hispanics disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president. Even more Hispanics — 54 percent — disapprove of his handling of the economy and 62 percent disapprove of his foreign policy. More than two-thirds of Hispanics — 69 percent — disapprove of the way Biden is handling immigration issues overall while 68 percent disapprove of his actions along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Quinnipiac poll also found that 57 percent of Hispanic Americans think President Biden does not have good leadership skills and 60 percent believe the Biden administration overall has not been competent in its governance.
Part of the loss in support of Biden's job approval among Hispanics stems from his attitude and words toward those fighting for freedom in socialist countries and his failure to control the U.S.-Mexico border amid an illegal immigration crisis his policies created.
"It took the Biden administration far too long – weeks to condemn socialism and communism," notes Danielle Alvarez, the RNC's communications director, of Biden's handling of the freedom fighters who bravely took to the streets in Cuba over the summer. "I think that what it boils down to is that Democrats welcome socialists and socialist policies to their party, and they have a hard time standing up for freedom and opportunity," she adds. "What should have happened from the onset, what you saw from Republican leaders from the onset, was support for those that were fighting for freedom in Cuba.”
"One of the things that we appreciate the most when we come to the United States is to be able to live in safe neighborhoods," adds RNC Hispanic Communications Director Jaime Florez who fled Columbia under threats to his life for calling out the illegal criminal enterprises ravaging his country. "I would say that most Latin American countries, we have gangs, we have drug traffickers, we have lots of crime from different sources. When we come to the United States, we find safe neighborhoods" where "you can send your kids to school and be able to feel safe that nothing is going to happen to them," Florez says. "That doesn't happen in Latin America — and sadly, we're seeing from a few months back to now that some of those things that we didn't expect that would happen one day in the United States are already happening."
The RNC's deputy national press secretary Nicole Morales points out there are "illicit drugs flooding into the country at record rates" while "thousands of pounds of fentanyl are being seized and human traffickers are coming in and dropping children off at the border." All the lawlessness, she says, is because "'Defund the Police' is not working with the border because all of this is flooding in not only to border communities, but to the rest of the United States.”
"We're also seeing DHS Secretary Mayorkas who goes down to the border and is unwilling to call it a crisis and then we later hear in leaked audio that he had called it unsustainable yet no action was ever taken with the border," reminds Macarena Martinez, the RNC's Texas communications director.
Townhall's Julio Rosas was the one who asked Mayorkas — when he visited Del Rio, Texas as some 15,000 illegal immigrants set up a refugee camp under the international bridge — if the situation at the border was a crisis. Mayorkas cut Julio off and refused to answer the question or call the unmitigated flow of illegal migrants a crisis in public despite private comments saying the situation is "unsustainable."
Martinez also adds "we're seeing a snowball effect down there and no action by the Biden administration except to throw Border Patrol agents under the bus," referring to the debunked and phony leftist narrative that agents were assaulting illegal immigrants (they weren't) with items they don't even have.
Watch Free of Fear Part II below:
Join the conversation as a VIP Member