Month: March 2019

Talk about lost in translation.

Democrats hoping to court Hispanic voters in the 2020 campaign season by turning out election materials in Spanish just aren’t getting their message across. Literally.

According to an analysis by Politico writer Jesus Rodriguez, every Democratic campaign site with hopes of catering to Hispanics — by posting material in Spanish — is falling woefully short of producing error-free copy in language that fluent Spanish speakers will understand.

In some cases, Rodriguez found, the material seemed to represent little better than a cut-and-paste job from a Google translation.

While this might be intended to show that the candidate’s heart, at least, is in the right place, it ends up giving exactly the opposite message.

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“It’s the front door to the campaign. And it’s indicative,” Lisa Navarrete, an adviser at the Hispanic advocacy group UnidosUS, told Rodriguez.

“If you’re not investing in this … it will indicate to us that perhaps you’re not taking the other parts of reaching out to the community as seriously.”

Now, granted, fluency in Spanish is not exactly a common trait among American journalists (your correspondent, for instance, would have about enough Spanish to ask where the men’s room is, in a pinch).

It’s also worth noting that President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 had no website in Spanish, the White House website lacks a Spanish page (it had one during the Obama years), and Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign is similarly lacking.

Would it seriously surprise anyone if it were otherwise?

But if a political party and its top candidates have the temerity to present themselves as honestly interested in championing a community based on its language, they would do well to at least make the effort of doing it competently.

And Democrats — so far at least — aren’t coming close to that.

According to Rodriguez, four candidates merited top billing on their use of Spanish: New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; California Sen. Kamala Harris; and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

Rating as “average” were former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and New York Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand.

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Candidates Rodriguez considered “struggling” were Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Long-shot contenders for the Democratic nomination John Delaney, the former U.S. rep. from Maryland, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang earned failing grades for not having a Spanish website at all.

No matter where they fell on the grading scale, virtually all the candidates had made embarrassing mistakes that would have gotten them an “F” in a high school Spanish class.

According to Rodriguez, Harris, for instance, at one point posted in Spanish that she had “wasted” her life defending American democracy (her campaign’s language skills have since improved).

Castro’s website makes “rookie mistakes,” according to Rodriguez, “such as calling the United States ‘América’ instead of ‘Estados Unidos’ and being inconsistent between the informal tú and the formal usted.”

Klobuchar’s website, according to Rodriguez, uses Spanish that appears to be cut and pasted directly from a Google translation. (Which would not only earn an “F” from a Spanish teacher but could be a form of plagiarism too.)

Astute readers will notice that the list is missing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Texas Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke. Rodriguez gave them both “incompletes” because of a paucity of Spanish-language material related to their presidential campaigns on their websites so far.

Politico being Politico, Rodriguez noted that both men had adequate Spanish-language material in previous campaigns, which is apparently why he didn’t give them failing grades. (It might also have something to do with the fact that both men are ridiculously popular among a certain liberal demographic that happens to read Politico.)

Still, it’s passing strange that a man whose real name is Robert Francis O’Rourke — but who goes by the nickname “Beto” to appeal to Hispanic voters — doesn’t make just a little bit more of an effort to act like he’s as Hispanic as his moniker implies.

A cynical observer of American politics might think that Senor O’Rourke has no real connection to, or even interest in, Hispanic voters beyond what support he might be able to scam from them in the primary or general election.

In fact, a cynic just might feel that what Beto is doing with Hispanics is a good picture of Democratic candidates as a whole — and the party as a whole — and the way they really look at Americans.

Stories like this from liberal-leaning publications like Politico might do their best to present the facts in the light most favorable to liberals — like giving “Beto” a pass for not posting enough Spanish-language material yet to make a judgment — but anyone who’s followed American politics for more than an election cycle or two knows the drill.

For Democrats, any community is important only as long as its votes can help Democratic politicians take or keep power. (The suffering of the country’s black community is the best, most disgraceful evidence of that.)

That’s the messages American voters really ought to be getting — no matter what language it’s in.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

The Mueller report was, roughly speaking, the media’s version of “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” They all thought it was going to be great for business — and then it came out.

But hey, even when you have a flop on your hands, you milk the heck out of it. So, now we’ve moved from Russian collusion and obstruction of justice to fevered cries of why we haven’t seen the full report or the president’s answers to the special counsel.

As most of you no doubt know, Robert Mueller’s investigations submitted a set of written questions to Trump about Russian collusion and whether he obstructed justice in the investigation into it, which were duly answered last November. Even though he negotiated an agreement that the answers wouldn’t be released, members of the media — including Chris Cuomo and his permanent rictus of incipient annoyance — are demanding their release.

Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, appeared Monday on Cuomo’s crosstalk-fest, where he addressed whether the written answers ought to be released.

“I’m not waiving…anything. Absent what? A court order. And there’s going to be no court order here.”Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow says he won’t volunteer a public release of the President’s written answers to the Special Counsel without a clear court order https://t.co/uiYuCHhJ7V pic.twitter.com/pstsIUhYtT

— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) March 26, 2019

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Both Cuomo and Sekulow, it’s worth noting, are attorneys. After examining the exchange, you’ll probably have a good idea which one you’d prefer as legal representation.

Cuomo began the dialogue on the issue by asking why he shouldn’t be able to look at the president’s answers to the special counsel.

“Well, number one, you don’t have a right to see the president’s answers,” Sekulow responded.

When asked why not, he said, “Because if I was representing you and worked out an arrangement with the special counsel or U.S. attorney and this was going to be done in a particular way, would you be comfortable with me releasing your records?

“If I were president of the United States and it was a matter of critical importance and confidence to the American people, yes, I would,” Cuomo said.

As an aside here, I’m sure Cuomo makes a lot more money on TV than he would down at the courtroom — even with the family name — but this legal advice from the CNN host makes me think it’s a massive blessing he had punditry to fall back upon.

Sekulow noted that both Trump and every other American are considered the same under the law, asking why it should “make a difference if it were president of the United States or if it’s you, Chris Cuomo?”

“But I don’t think it’s a legal argument,” Cuomo said. “I think it’s a political duty as the highest elected office of the land.”

“Look, the facts are, they asked questions, we responded,” Sekulow said.

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“I’m the president’s lawyer. So I’m not waiving — as you would — anything, absent … a court order. And there’s not going to be a court order here.”

Having lost on that account, Cuomo then moved onto whether the president should have used the word “exonerate” when describing what the Mueller report had to say about him.

No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2019

Sekulow noted that a prosecutor doesn’t do the job of exonerating.

“I don’t know why he didn’t make the call!” an incredulous Cuomo said.

“I’ll tell you why,” Sekulow said. “He said it raised ‘difficult questions of law and fact.’ You were an attorney. When you have difficult questions of law and difficult facts, guess what you don’t do?”

“Prosecute,” Cuomo said.

I believe this is what the kids call “pwnt.” The only thing that Sekulow got wrong here is that at last report, Cuomo remains an attorney, just not a practicing one. (And after watching this exchange, thank God for that; this guy apparently has a legal-skills-to-self-promotion ratio slightly more respectable than Michael Avenatti’s.)

Other than that, Sekulow was entirely on-point.

President Trump gave written answers to the special counsel with the negotiated understanding that they wouldn’t be released to the public. None of the answers seem to have implicated him in perjury, at least for what we can glean from the report. Why would his lawyers waive the rights they negotiated? Just because the media insists on extending this spectacle as long as possible? So that the punditocracy can spend more news cycles poring over each word in his answers as if they were lit professors trying to interpret Thomas Pynchon?

A flop is a flop. There’s almost certainly nothing in the president’s answers or the full Mueller report that will turn it into a blockbuster, no matter how desperately Chris Cuomo and everyone else at CNN might hope for it.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.