It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club’s potluck party for President Trump’s State of the Union address, but there was a problem:
Not many Hispanics showed up. Or people, period.
About half of the the 20-some folks who trudged into the club’s Woodland Hills offices were Latino. Four of them were chairman David Hernandez and his family.
“People are sick, hurt, or fed up with politics,” the soft-spoken 77-year-old told me with a laugh before the speech began.
It was a dramatic turn from three years ago, when Trump reclaimed the White House with 48% of the Latino vote, the highest percentage ever captured by a Republican presidential candidate. A record number of California Latinos won legislative seats. The Hispanic Republican Club opened chapters in Ventura and Orange counties. Rodriguez now sits on the California Republican Party board of directors along with former Cudahy mayor and fellow club member Jack Guerrero.
How the quesadillas have flipped. CNN poll released earlier this week showed Latino support for Trump went from 41% last February to just 22% right now.
“It’s the visuals of those raids,” Hernandez acknowledged with a sigh. “It only makes sense that people will feel afraid. Some of our supporters and friends, they’re suffering.”
He turned to his vice chair, Tony Barragan, who reviews restaurants for the club’s weekly radio show. Near them, a table hosted three clipboards fat with paperwork for new members to fill. It had a total of one name. “How many of the places you’ve visited are feeling the crunch?”
“Half,” Barragan replied. His father came to the United States from Mexico illegally then became a pioneering Mexican restaurateur in Los Angeles.
“We gotta win the Hispanic vote. I hope that he [Trump] changes his approach and remembers that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Fat chance of that, Tony.
The cheers were muted as the State of the Union pageantry kicked off. When Trump claimed early on that “inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” only one club member offered a golf clap.
Maybe the audience knew that was just too big of a whopper.
No one seemed particularly animated in the beginning except Rolando Salmerón. He sat in the front cheering and fist-pumping and chanting “USA! USA!” every time Republicans gave Trump a standing ovation.
The electrical engineer, who gave his age as “over 1,000,” came to the United States from El Salvador illegally in 1975 but was now a citizen. He told me during dinner that Trump had done “more good in one year than Democrats ever did in 30” and especially supported his deportation deluge because MS-13 members assaulted and bullied his son during his high school years.
“Trump deported three million people — Obama deported way more,” said Salmerón. He wore a hat emblazoned with “FIGHT” over the famous photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist just after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. On the bill was an embroidered version of the president’s signature. “Unfortunately, the media that we have — including the L.A. Times — doesn’t say the truth.”
I mean, I think the truth is Trump’s deportation machine might not hesitate to hassle Señor Salmerón over here, like it has other Latinos, if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We watched Trump’s speech on Fox News, which kept cutting to unflattering shots of conservative scapegoats like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Those prompts uncorked snide comments from members — “Traitor!” someone yelled when the television flashed an image of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — that turned the atmosphere in the room from reserved to suddenly rollicking.
Hernandez, however, stayed silent.
While Trump bloviated about tariffs, the Hispanic Republican Club chair nibbled on dessert. As the triumphant U.S. men’s hockey team made a cameo, Hernandez was looking at his smartphone. Taxes, illegal immigration, foreign policy — nothing seemed to move Hernandez even as his fellow members got rowdier and rowdier. When Rep. Brad Sherman appeared on the screen, Hernandez finally said something: “There’s our congressman!”
But once Trump began to attack his enemies, Hernandez began to whisper comments with a smile to his daughter, who sat at the lonely check-in table. He laughed after the president gestured to the Democrats sitting glumly before him in the House of Representatives chambers and growled, “These people are crazy.” When Trump announced the awarding of Medals of Honors to a Korean War fighter pilot and a Marine who helped to capture former Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro, Hernandez — a Navy veteran — finally applauded.
I thought Trump’s speech, the longest State of the Union address ever, was a giant, xenophobic bore. So did viewers — a CNN survey found it was his worst-received State of the Union address ever and ranked even lower than any of Joe Biden’s attempts. But at the Hispanic Republic Club bash, we skeptics might as well been living in a different dimension.
“I liked the personal touch,” Hernandez told me after. “We need more of that. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
“It was beautiful,” said 68-year-old Ricardo Benitez, who’s running for a state assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley and greeted Salmerón with a “¿Entonces, cipote? [What’s up, man?] — the only Spanish I heard all night. The Salvadoran immigrant was impressed by “how our president acknowledged victims of crime and how he freed Venezuela…He’s doing a good job regardless of what his enemies are saying.”
Benitez scoffed when I asked if he thought Trump’s immigration raids would cost Republicans Latino support in this year’s midterms.
“Democrats don’t know anything. They think the immigration raids will stop people from voting. That’s not true. Deportations have always happened. Obama deported more people.”
Nearby, Lani Kane helped to clear tables. “I like that [Trump] honored civilians and our military,” said the 50-year-old, whose T-shirt identified her as a daughter of a World War II veteran. “But in a way, I understand why Democrats don’t like him. The speech was all ‘I, I, I.’”
The Sylmar resident stayed quiet when I asked if she thought Latinos would stay with the GOP for the midterms and beyond.
“If Republicans can continue to promote our values and protect our youth and lower taxes, I hope they do,” Kane finally said.
But did she think they would? This time, Kane nodded vigorously.
“I think Hispanics are starting to wake up.”
Well, I agree with her there. But I don’t think they’re waking up the way Kane thinks.
When myself and a Times photographer thanked the group and left, the number of Latinos at the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club State of the Union potluck, already small, dropped by a quarter.
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