In a similar occurrence to the Muslim college student who was kicked off his flight after someone overheard him speaking Arabic, a reporter was kicked out of Trump Tower after being overheard speaking Spanish. What makes it (somehow) even worse is that the reporter had been at Trump Tower to conduct an interview with Donald Trump himself.
According to BuzzFeed, Marcos Stupenengo was supposed to conduct an interview with Trump on Monday for Mexican network TV Azteca. Then he got a call and answered it in Spanish. That’s when Trump’s team canceled the interview. Funnily enough, they had a Spanish-speaking Secret Service agent escort Stupenengo out, who also apologized to him. Stupenengo was said to have mentioned the incident in his report, but said in an email to BuzzFeed, “I can say that after 13 years of journalism worse things have happened to me.”
This incident seems to reinforce that if Trump were to become president, speaking Spanish — maybe even being Latino — would invite extra scrutiny. Maybe it’s the fact that Trump is suspicious of Spanish-language media in general. After all, he did kick famed Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos out of one of his press conferences. This was after Ramos criticized Trump’s immigration plan. It could be that Trump didn’t want to hear similar views or questions from Stupenengo.
That kind of reasoning from a public figure is not justifiable, of course. And it makes Trump’s transparent attempts to show much he loves “Hispanics” by eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo all the more inadequate.
UPDATE: On Tuesday afternoon, Dylan Byers of CNN tweeted that the TV Azteca editor-in-chief admitted not really setting up an interview with Trump before the call began.
TV Azteca editor-in-chief just told me reporter "didn't really" have scheduled interview but was trying to get one https://t.co/OYXHhSpiXT
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) May 17, 2016
(via BuzzFeed)