Obama: Hispanics who voted for Trump ignored his racism because it was ‘less important’ than abortion and gay marriage

Former President Barack Obama argued that Hispanic voters who supported President Trump ignored his racism and his placing of undocumented workers in cages because “that’s less important” than his views on gay marriage and abortion.

“People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump,” the former president said during an appearance on the radio show The Breakfast Club on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who … the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts detainees — undocumented workers — in cages, they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion.”

Obama was slammed by conservatives on Twitter over the comment, including by the Federalist’s Ben Domenech, who called the former president a “f—ing bigot.”

“Ah yes, those Hispanic evangelicals,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted. “So backwards. Clinging to their guns and religion, you might say. Barack Obama still the most condescending corporate liberal in America.”

“Just to underscore how this is a brazen lie: I worked on the Trump campaign’s Hispanic media with@mercedesschlappand and @KDORR_USA,” Trump campaign adviser Giancarlo Sopo tweeted. “We never ran a single ad on gay marriage. It wasn’t an issue. Our focus was public safety, economics and socialism. Obama is making this s— up.”

It has been widely reported that the “cages” Obama referred to were built during his administration, which Trump has pointed out on several occasions when criticized for viral photos showing children in cages.

In 2018, several liberal politicians and pundits posted images on Twitter of children being detained at the border in cages and blamed Trump before it was determined those pictures were taken while Obama was in the White House.

Another viral photo in 2018 of a young child being kept in a cage was spread on social media as evidence of the brutality of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border, but it turned out to be a photo of a young boy at a political protest.

Some, including the Washington Post, have attempted to make the distinction that “Obama built the cages and Trump did something unprecedented with them.”

Exit polls from the presidential election earlier this month showed Trump making significant strides with Hispanic voters in key swing states, and voting data shows that Trump won the highest share of the “non-white” vote for any Republican presidential candidate since 1960.