A racist remark allegedly made by former President Donald Trump about slain soldier Vanessa Guillén is drawing reaction from some Hispanics, but could be tempered by her sister’s support for Trump and current political divisions among Latinos.
The Atlantic magazine reported that when Trump was president, he complained about the cost of paying for Guillén’s funeral, as he had promised her family he would do at a White House meeting in July 2020. Citing two unnamed sources who attended a meeting in December 2020 When told the $60,000 price tag, Trump responded: “It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a damn Mexican!” He told his then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, not to pay for it, the magazine reported.
NBC News has not confirmed The Atlantic’s reporting.
Meadows and Trump campaign spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied making such a comment, the magazine reported.
Guillén’s sister, Mayra Guillén, who was not present at the White House meeting where Trump allegedly made the comment, defended him on X.
“Wow. I don’t understand how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics; hurtful and disrespectful to the important changes she made for military personnel. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect for my family and Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today,” she wrote.
Guillén family attorney Natalie Khawam told The Atlantic that a bill was sent to Trump, but the family received no money from him and that some costs were covered by the military, as well as donations. Khawam has condemned the Atlantic story about X and praised the Trump administration for its support of the family.
In an emailed statement, Trump campaign spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said: “President Donald Trump has cared for America’s military heroes throughout his life. As president, he has kept our troops out of harm’s way, secured the largest pay increase for our troops in a decade, and signed historic VA reforms into law.” Pfeiffer added that Trump has financially supported veterans and advocated for Kabul Gold Star families, an apparent reference to the families of service members killed during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Guillén was brutally murdered by a fellow soldier in 2020 while stationed at the Army post then called Fort Hood, now Fort Cavazos, in Texas. She disappeared about two months before her body was found, after families staged public protests with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group, which was founded in Texas.
Her death led to demands for change in the military’s handling of sexual harassment and assault and its response and investigation of such complaints. Portions of the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act were included in the Defense Authorization Act signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, dismissed Trump’s comment as reported by The Atlantic, posting the details to X and saying: “Trump has nothing but contempt for Latinos, women and our military. This man doesn’t care about us.”
Trump has been criticized for racist comments against people of Mexican descent, as well as other Latinos, both immigrants and those born in the US. When he announced his first presidential campaign in 2015, he said that Mexico had not sent its best to the US and that those who had come from Mexico were rapists, criminals and people who brought drugs.
Trump questioned U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s ability to do his job without bias because of his Mexican heritage. Curiel oversaw the fraud case against Trump University, which was later settled. While president, Trump made disparaging statements about Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, saying, “They want everything done for them,” and was criticized for disaster response and throwing away paper towels during a visit to the island after the disaster. deadly hurricane.
Trump has expanded Republican support among Hispanic voters this year.
In a recent NBC News poll, about 40% of registered Hispanic voters said they support Trump, while 54% support Vice President Kamala Harris and 6% are undecided or say they will not vote.
Artemio Muniz, president of the Federation of Hispanic Republicans, an auxiliary group of the Republican Party in Texas, said Hispanic voters will weigh the Atlantic report against Mayra Guillén’s defense of Trump.
He said Trump showed the family’s respect by “opposing the military complex” and supporting the Guillén family.
“They didn’t want to get to the bottom of the investigation, and President Trump paid attention to that, and he didn’t have to,” Muniz said.
According to reporting by The Atlantic, Trump questioned the severity of punishments for military personnel as a result of the Guillén investigation, which led to 14 leaders being removed or suspended.
Jason Villalba, CEO and board chairman of the Texas Hispanic Public Policy Foundation, said that while the comments are “clearly in line with the kinds of things he has said publicly,” Trump is unlikely to face any consequences in the election.
“Vanessa’s parents were immigrants. We know how he feels about people of color, immigrants, Mexican immigrants and the undocumented, so we shouldn’t be surprised that he privately uses terms like ‘f—ing Mexican,'” said Villalba, who is Mexican-American . and a former Republican state lawmaker who calls himself a never-Trumper.
But “if you are a conservative Latin American and you vote for Trump, this kind of rhetoric is already baked into your analysis,” Villalba said.
Dredging up a long history
Trump’s comments triggered Latinos who saw them as part of a history of racism that Mexican Americans in the military have long faced. Such incidents played a major role in the early and later civil rights movement for Mexican Americans and other Latinos.
“For former President Trump to say that ‘no Mexican is worth a Mexican dollar, especially a soldier, is probably one of the most heinous attacks on our community and on our soldiers in modern American history,’” said former LULAC President Domingo Garcia. chairman of the political action committee LULAC Adelante, which has endorsed Harris.
“We strongly condemn the racist, hate-filled attack on an American soldier and the legacy of Vanessa Guillén,” said Garcia, who led LULAC when the group led the effort to investigate her death.
LULAC was founded in 1929 in part by World War I veterans who fought against the lack of economic and educational opportunities for Mexican Americans, even though they had served in the war.
In 1949, a funeral home in Three Rivers, Texas, would not allow the chapel to be used for services for World War II veteran Felix Longoria because “the whites wouldn’t like it.”
The late civil rights leader Hector P. Garcia founded another civil rights group, the American GI Forum, after witnessing discrimination against Mexican-American World War veterans in South Texas.
Both the American GI Forum and LULAC wanted to demonstrate that their members were just as American as other people who are not of Mexican descent — and that many of those Mexican American veterans included family members who were in the U.S. before the country’s southern border was achieved. even drawn.
But that history isn’t as well known among younger Latinos or those whose American roots are more recent. For some, the discrimination is considered a thing of the past that left-wing groups use to promote a “victim” ideology among Hispanics.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, who worked closely with the Guillén family to pass the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act, did not directly address Trump’s comment in a statement following the Atlantic article. She focused on Guillén and the impact of her death on sexual harassment and violence, calling her “an American hero.”
“Today, as we do every day, let us remember Vanessa as she was. She loved her family, her country and her community,” Garcia said. “Vanessa’s story helped spark a movement that has made our country and the world a better place. She represents the very best of the Mexican American and Latino community.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
