How Trump Works

I think that the GOP would just as soon Donald Trump would have melted down by now but, to their surprise, he is going strong. We are headed into the second Republican debate and he will, once again, be in the center, leading the pack.

I want to note a few things that Trump seems to be all about. He, apparently, hates Hispanic people and seems to characterize all of them as Mexican nationals, no matter where they are from. And all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. This kind of rhetoric caused a lot of companies to decide to quit doing business with him, including the PGA tour, NBC and one of the Spanish-language television networks, Univision. Trump decided to sue Univision when they dropped coverage of his Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.

Since Univision does have a large Hispanic viewing audience, their news division wanted to interview candidate Donald Trump about his statements concerning Mexicans living here in the United States and his apparent issues with them. Their polls show that Trump enjoys a 75% negative rating with Hispanics and the network believes that he cannot win any national Presidential election if he does not have a great deal of Hispanic support. I know what they do in news departments. They task someone with calling twice a day every day to ask for an interview. Someone from Univision has been calling the Trump organization every day for, at this writing, three months. The person making the call may not be a top reporter and certainly is not their national news anchorperson, but these calls are being made. Were anyone from the Trump organization to suggest that Donald Trump would be happy to take an interview request from Univision, the follow-up would be at a high level.

So, after Donald Trump has refused any question from Univision for three months now, evening news anchor Jorge Ramos decided to attend a press conference held by Donald Trump.

I happened to turn on the television at that time—not to listen to Donald Trump but, rather, to see what was happening and to rest from a trying day. And, in tuning around, I noted that CNN, MSNBC and Faux "news" were all carrying the news conference live. I found this fact, alone, interesting. They do not do this with any of the other candidates. And, I think that with Donald Trump, he says such outrageous things that there is some fascination.

I had flipped back to MSNBC when Jorge Ramos stood up. I heard Ramos' questions—CNN did not have good audio on Ramos' questions (I found that out later). Donald Trump saw the Univision anchorman stand up and immediately turned to the center and tried to call on another reporter. The reporter Trump called on did not ask a question and, instead, listened to the exchange between Jorge Ramos and Trump. Ramos was asking how the United States could afford to deport 11 million persons in the United States who had overstayed their visas or entered this country without proper paperwork. He also asked how Donald Trump was going to build a wall over the entire US-Mexico border (knowing that many of the undocumented aliens in this country come by air and other means) and how Donald Trump could claim that he would get the Hispanic vote when a vast majority of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

Each of these questions are fair questions, because all of this information is the kind of information Donald Trump shares with the press and the American people every time he gives a speech. But the situation was interesting. Jorge Ramos was conducting an "ambush interview." And attempting to ambush someone is also fair, as Donald Trump and his organization have refused to offer an interview with Univision for three months. Trump knows this, because he tells his people to ignore their requests.

Rolonda Watts

In an "ambush interview," often the goal is to simply show the response to the ambush of the person being interviewed. In 1990, I edited a number of "ambush interviews with Inside Edition and I became quite familiar with how they work. Ambush interviews are the staple of investigative reporting on television, where the interviewee often does not wish to be interviewed. In 1990, I edited the report by Rolonda Watts with Byron De La Beckwith, the man who murdered Medgar Evers. Apparently, De La Beckwith had kept the murder weapon in his home and it was discovered in 1990. Watts telephoned him from New York and asked for an interview. She told me that De La Beckwith told her over the phone that Inside Edition was not to send a "nigger, jap, Jew or a spick" to interview him. Rolonda, who is black, told him that she would personally do the interview so that he could tell his side of the story.

Inside Edition had two cameras rolling as De La Beckwith threw Ms. Watts off his property. I recall we had to "bleep" out considerable profanity from De La Beckwith. We aired the ambush pretty much as it happened.

A few of my friends have suggested to me that Jorge Ramos was being rude, that he was not recognized, that he spoke out of turn. Not true. Every single reporter in the room knew what was going on. And so did Donald Trump. Trump thought he could simply refuse to call on Ramos and that would settle the issue. But Ramos was all set to jump in as soon as Trump drew a breath and went looking for another "softball." And the rules of decorum change in an ambush. This is an ambush that Donald Trump set up as soon as he decided to ignore Univision for three months.

Jorge Ramos

For my readers who are not Hispanic, that is like throwing Lester Holt from NBC or David Muir from ABC or Scott Pelley from CBS out of a press conference. You don't do that. You take the question and you try to maintain some dignity if you think the news anchorperson is going to make things hot for you. Instead, Trump revealed his real feelings for Hispanic Americans. He glanced at his bodyguard, who all but shoved Ramos out of the room and as that was happening, Trump told Ramos to "go back to Univision."He couldn't say Mexico because he knew the rest of the reporters in the press conference would immediately all start asking questions about his latest insult to Hispanic-Americans. Once out in the hallway, Trump's bodyguard said "Get out of my country" to Ramos, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 2008. Ramos is a respected, award-winning journalist and deserves treatment as such. Donald Trump treated him like he would like the United States to treat everyone of foreign origin.

That treatment is the reaction that Ramos' questions created in Donald Trump and, just as in the case where Byron De La Beckwith threw Rolonda Watts off his lawn, demonstrating his extreme prejudice, Trump demonstrated exactly the same prejudice with Ramos.

I would say that the score is Univision 2, Trump 0.

Now, Trump, realizing what just happened, did invite Ramos back to ask his question, whereupon Trump wanted Ramos' question to be all about Trump's lawsuit, but this would serve to be more mistreatment. At one point, Trump announced that he "liked Ramos." But he also said he did not know Ramos—even though he had refused to take a question from him, had him ejected from a press conference and also told him to "go back to Univision." Trump does something outrageous and has a meltdown in front of live crowds (throwing red meat to the isolationist radical racists in the Republican party) and then acts like it's all in fun.

I am hopeful that these meltdowns become more frequent so that America can really see who the Republican front-runner is. This says a whole lot about the Republican Party in general that they would accept Donald Trump as a candidate. I don't think America wants to hire such a volatile person as President.