{"id":193492,"date":"2026-02-25T19:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193492\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T19:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:16:08","slug":"beautiful-watching-trumps-state-of-union-with-latino-supporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193492\/","title":{"rendered":"“Beautiful”: Watching Trump’s State of Union with Latino supporters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club\u2019s potluck party for President Trump\u2019s State of the Union address<\/a>, but there was a problem:<\/p>\n

Not many Hispanics showed up. Or people, period.<\/p>\n

About half of the the 20-some folks who trudged into the club\u2019s Woodland Hills offices were Latino. Four of them were chairman David Hernandez and his family. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are sick, hurt, or fed up with politics,\u201d the soft-spoken 77-year-old told me with a laugh before the speech began.<\/p>\n

It was a dramatic turn from three years ago, when Trump reclaimed the White House with 48% of the Latino vote<\/a>, the highest percentage ever captured by a Republican presidential candidate. A record number of California Latinos won legislative seats<\/a>. The Hispanic Republican Club opened chapters in Ventura and Orange counties. Rodriguez now sits on the California Republican Party board of directors along with former Cudahy mayor and fellow club member Jack Guerrero.<\/p>\n

How the quesadillas have flipped. CNN poll released earlier this week showed Latino support for Trump went from 41% last February to just 22% right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the visuals of those raids<\/a>,\u201d Hernandez acknowledged with a sigh. \u201cIt only makes sense that people will feel afraid. Some of our supporters and friends, they\u2019re suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned to his vice chair, Tony Barragan, who reviews restaurants for the club\u2019s weekly radio show<\/a>. Near them, a table hosted three clipboards fat with paperwork for new members to fill. It had a total of one name. \u201cHow many of the places you\u2019ve visited are feeling the crunch?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf,\u201d Barragan replied. His father came to the United States from Mexico illegally then became a pioneering Mexican restaurateur<\/a> in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe gotta win the Hispanic vote. I hope that he [Trump] changes his approach and remembers that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fat chance of that, Tony. <\/p>\n

The cheers were muted as the State of the Union pageantry kicked off. When Trump claimed early on that \u201cinflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,\u201d only one club member offered a golf clap. <\/p>\n

Maybe the audience knew that was just too big of a whopper.<\/p>\n

No one seemed particularly animated in the beginning except Rolando Salmer\u00f3n. He sat in the front cheering and fist-pumping and chanting \u201cUSA! USA!\u201d every time Republicans gave Trump a standing ovation. <\/p>\n

\"David <\/p>\n

Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club chairman David Hernandez hosts a political radio talk show at the studios of AM Radio 870 in Glendale in 2022.<\/p>\n

(Luis Sinco \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

The electrical engineer, who gave his age as \u201cover 1,000,\u201d came to the United States from El Salvador illegally in 1975 but was now a citizen. He told me during dinner that Trump had done \u201cmore good in one year than Democrats ever did in 30\u201d and especially supported his deportation deluge because MS-13 members assaulted and bullied his son during his high school years. <\/p>\n

\u201cTrump deported three million people \u2014 Obama deported way more,\u201d said Salmer\u00f3n. He wore a hat emblazoned with \u201cFIGHT\u201d over the famous photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist just after a would-be assassin\u2019s bullet grazed his ear. On the bill was an embroidered version of the president\u2019s signature. \u201cUnfortunately, the media that we have \u2014 including the L.A. Times \u2014 doesn\u2019t say the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mean, I think the truth is Trump\u2019s deportation machine might not hesitate to hassle Se\u00f1or Salmer\u00f3n over here, like it has other Latinos, if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. <\/p>\n

We watched Trump\u2019s speech on Fox News, which kept cutting to unflattering shots of conservative scapegoats like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Those prompts uncorked snide comments from members \u2014 \u201cTraitor!\u201d someone yelled when the television flashed an image of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett \u2014 that turned the atmosphere in the room from reserved to suddenly rollicking.<\/p>\n

Hernandez, however, stayed silent.<\/p>\n

While Trump bloviated about tariffs<\/a>, the Hispanic Republican Club chair nibbled on dessert. As the triumphant U.S. men\u2019s hockey team made a cameo<\/a>, Hernandez was looking at his smartphone. Taxes, illegal immigration, foreign policy \u2014 nothing seemed to move Hernandez even as his fellow members got rowdier and rowdier. When Rep. Brad Sherman appeared on the screen, Hernandez finally said something: \u201cThere\u2019s our congressman!\u201d<\/p>\n

But once Trump began to attack his enemies, Hernandez began to whisper comments with a smile to his daughter, who sat at the lonely check-in table. He laughed after the president gestured to the Democrats sitting glumly before him in the House of Representatives chambers and growled, \u201cThese people are crazy.\u201d When Trump announced the awarding of Medals of Honors to a Korean War fighter pilot and a Marine who helped to capture former Venezuela dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, Hernandez \u2014 a Navy veteran \u2014 finally applauded.<\/p>\n

I thought Trump\u2019s speech, the longest State of the Union address ever, was a giant, xenophobic bore. So did viewers \u2014 a CNN survey<\/a> found it was his worst-received State of the Union address ever and ranked even lower than any of Joe Biden\u2019s attempts. But at the Hispanic Republic Club bash, we skeptics might as well been living in a different dimension.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked the personal touch,\u201d Hernandez told me after. \u201cWe need more of that. This is a marathon, not a sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was beautiful,\u201d said 68-year-old Ricardo Benitez, who\u2019s running for a state assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley and greeted Salmer\u00f3n with a \u201c\u00bfEntonces, cipote? [What\u2019s up, man?] \u2014 the only Spanish I heard all night. The Salvadoran immigrant was impressed by \u201chow our president acknowledged victims of crime and how he freed Venezuela…He\u2019s doing a good job regardless of what his enemies are saying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benitez scoffed when I asked if he thought Trump\u2019s immigration raids would cost Republicans Latino support in this year\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats don\u2019t know anything. They think the immigration raids will stop people from voting. That\u2019s not true. Deportations have always happened. Obama deported more people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Various <\/p>\n

Various political flyers for various republican candidates sit on a table at the offices of L.A. Hispanic Republican Club on Tuesday in Woodland Hills. <\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Nearby, Lani Kane helped to clear tables. \u201cI like that [Trump] honored civilians and our military,\u201d said the 50-year-old, whose T-shirt identified her as a daughter of a World War II veteran. \u201cBut in a way, I understand why Democrats don\u2019t like him. The speech was all \u2018I, I, I.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sylmar resident stayed quiet when I asked if she thought Latinos would stay with the GOP for the midterms and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Republicans can continue to promote our values and protect our youth and lower taxes, I hope they do,\u201d Kane finally said.<\/p>\n

But did she think they would? This time, Kane nodded vigorously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Hispanics are starting to wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, I agree with her there. But I don\u2019t think they\u2019re waking up the way Kane thinks. <\/p>\n

When myself and a Times photographer thanked the group and left, the number of Latinos at the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club State of the Union potluck, already small, dropped by a quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club\u2019s potluck party for President Trump\u2019s State of the Union address,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[90553,1751,2321,48,52,51,90554,47,50,49,2324,592,3020,20396,90552,27119,225,29860,1519,90103,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-193492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-california-latinos","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-hernandez","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-headlines","13":"tag-la-news","14":"tag-latino-support","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-member","19":"tag-people","20":"tag-president-trump","21":"tag-raid","22":"tag-rolando-salmeron","23":"tag-speech","24":"tag-state","25":"tag-taxis","26":"tag-trump","27":"tag-union-address","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}