WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump earned his first address as a re -established president and spoke directly with communities that had avoided his party historically.
“For the black and Spanish communities I want to thank you for the enormous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your voice,” Trump said. “We have set records and I will not forget. I have heard you in the campaign and I look forward to working with you in the coming years. “
Trump, whose inauguration coincided with the Holiday Martin Luther King Jr., promised “to strive to realize his dream.” It is a vow that skeptical views of many prominent black and Spanish leaders of civil rights. But under the conservatives of color that Trump surrounds, the moment was an approval of their greatest hope, years in the making.
Familiar news and daily pleasure, exactly in your inbox
Watch yourself-the Yodel is the source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
“This room was impossible twenty years ago,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-fla., Sunday evening during the “Legacy of Freedom Ball”, a gala of a few hundred mainly black conservatives that met to call the new administration. “But in 2024 we will not be back alone, but we bring black people and Spanish people to the Republican party,” Donalds said the crowd.
Trump’s comments referred to the record margins he collected between heavily black and Spanish regions of the country compared to earlier Republican presidential candidates. On Gala’s prior to the inauguration of Trump, toasted black and Spanish activists and legislators, roasted to a new era in which many of them hope to play a greater role than in the first term of Trump.
“There is so much that we expect from the president, and I believe he will deliver,” said Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a pronounced conservative that runs to become the first black and female governor of the state.
Earle-Sears mentioned stricter immigration policy, which breaks down crime and reducing the role of the federal government in education as priorities that she believed to speak with black Americans. “Let’s just give him a chance,” she said.
After a year of split reports from the Trump campaign, which invested in appeal to black and Spanish voters, the festive spirit came, while at the same time depicting immigrants and color communities as violent criminals and the country as affected by diversity and inclusion policy that preservation policy of conservations as weakening the nation.
But Trump’s division over “black jobs” and “Spanish jobs” spoke with a view of the economy and society that Saillience found with some voters, including color votes, in addition to the concern about inflation, rapid technological change and geopolitical unrest abroad .
Trump received a larger part of black and Latino voters than in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden – in particular under young black and Spanish male voters – according to AP Votecast, a national study including more than 120,000 voters.
In general, about 16% of black voters supported Trump in November, while about 8 out of 10 voted for Democrat Kamala Harris. But that was a shift of 2020 when only 8% of black voters supported Trump and about 9 out of 10 went for Biden. Among Spanish voters, 43% voted for Trump in November, an increase of about a third in 2020.
Black women are largely the exception to this shift – about 9 in 10 black female voters supported Harris in 2024, comparable to the share that Biden supported in 2020.
In the Spanish inaugural ball the Saturday before the inauguration of Trump, GOP members of the congress, state laws and governors mixed with conservative activists and business managers from the Western hemisphere.
Latin -Maaman leaders such as Argentinian President Javier Milei and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña wrinkled Ellebogen with Republican Congressmen, including Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, Mexican actors and Spanish business executives. Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott all appeared.
“I don’t think Trump gets enough credit to listen and adjust his policy, partly what people want in these communities.” said Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami. Suarez, who leads a city that is overwhelming Spanish and is in the Nexus of the US and Latin -America, said that Trump can maintain his support among Spanish voters and grow it again. It just goes back to basics. “
Texas Senator Ted Cruz collected gala communders by telling about the November elections, in which many majority-Spanish provinces in his home who had traditionally demonstrated Democrats to Trump. Cruz, who followed Trump in many of the same provinces when he ran for re -election, called the Gop’s Inroads with Spanish voters ‘unprecedented’.
“The Rio Grande Valley has been clear blue for 100 years. Well, I am here to tell you that the Rio Grande Valley turned red, “said Cruz, who is Spanish. “That is a generation change for Texas, and it is a generation change for America.”
Other legislators took the time to pitch a future -oriented vision.
“I think the biggest thing is that we start to recognize that we are Americans first. We have different backgrounds, but always share the same dreams. And that’s what happens across the board, “said Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, in an interview with the Associated Press. Owens is one of the four black Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Senator Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who was born in Bogotá, Colombia, rejected stereotypes of Hispanics as exclusively workers or immigrants and asked the crowd to present the country after the four years of Trump’s term.
“In four years, America will understand the positive impact of the Spanish community. And we will build an alliance between a free South America, a prosperous South America and a strong, free and prosperous United States of America,” said Moreno.
“That is what we will do in the next four years and it will be the Spanish community that makes it happen.”
Black conservatives are also energetic. De Gop has not added this cycle to the Congress, but activists hope to change that to the Midterms of 2026. And Donalds, a Republican Florida and one of the most prominent black surrogates for Trump on the campaign track, jokes with participants To “stay still” about his ambition for a higher office – speakers during the night called him the ‘Governurdonalds’.
The commingling scenes and ambitions were no coincidence.
Conservative groups such as Bienvenido and the Black Conservative Federation, who organized the balls, had worked behind the scenes for years to build conservative black and Spanish organizing networks. And Trump’s job has promoted friendly ties with the political law of Latin America, in particular in Trump’s friendship with the then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s wife attended Trump’s inauguration.
The Milei of Argentina “and I were friends before he was chosen as president,” said Roger Stone, an old Trump confidence. “We were pen friends, you know, via the internet. I am a strong believer in him. “
Some in Trump’s Orbit Hope Hope Secretary of State Marco Rubio will deepen the ties of America with right-wing Latin American leaders in the coming years.
The exuberance of the night reflected a desire among many Spanish conservatives to solidify the inso’s of the party with Spanish voters and to increase their influence in the Gop.
“We are growing exponentially,” said Jaime Florez, the Spanish communication director for the Trump campaign.
And who knows? “The first Spanish president of the United States could be here tonight,” he added.
___