Rep. Castro finds irony in hometown Trump donors
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, whose online post identifying San Antonio contributors to President Donald Trump triggered rebukes fromRepublicans, says he was motivated by the “sadness and irony” of seeing local donations flow to a president who vilifies Latinos.
“These are folks, some of them well-known in the community, who have been very successful in business, and they’re operating in a city that is 65 percent Hispanic, which includes a lot of their customers and employees. And yet they’re giving large sums of money to a president who is using it to run Facebook ads calling Hispanics invaders,” Castro said.
Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, cited recent news reports that Trump’s reelection committee had placed about 2,000 Facebook ads as recently asMay using the word “invasion” to describe the flow of migrants across the U.S. border.
“That makes it dangerous for millions of people in this country because of their skin color. It makes them targets for people who buy into the radical ideology that the president has promoted,” Castro said.
The decision by Castro to publicize the names of 44 of Trump’s San Antonio-area contributors on his Twitter account Monday appears to be part of a coordinated effort by prominent Latinos to push back against the president and his political arm.
Castro, D-San Antonio, is among some three dozen Latino leaders who have spoken out against Trump since the massacre of 22 people Saturday at an El Paso Walmart by a gunman whose writings echoed the president’s immigration rhetoric.
“Everybody was deeply shocked and saddened,” Castro said, “and has resolved to speak up about the hate against this community that Donald Trump has promoted.”
The president, who on Wednesday visited El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — where a second mass killing occurred on Saturday — condemned racismandwhite supremacy this week. Trump has said the surge of migrants includes criminals and killers and poses a threat to the safety of Americans.
Castro’s post triggered a furious debate on Twitter. Republicans and conservative groups condemned his decision to post contributors’ names. His tweet connected their donations to Trump’s “invasion” rhetoric and thereby, indirectly, to the alleged El Paso gunman, who echoed the president’s language in a manifesto posted on the internet.
Republican leaders and other detractors say that was a step too far.
“It’s dangerous, reckless and (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi needs to condemn it,” tweeted Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.
On Fox & Friends, Donald Trump Jr. likened Castro to the Dayton shooter while seemingly confusing Joaquin Castro and twin brother Julián Castro, who is competing for the Democratic presidential nomination. Joaquin is his brother’s campaign chairman.
“When a radical left-wing politician who’s polling at about zero percent does this for either attention or a call to action, it’s pretty scary. That’s the same thing that the Dayton, Ohio shooter did…You have fringe crazies on all sides. They see that, now you’re going after ordinary citizens,” Trump Jr. said.
Shannon Deason, 50, of San Antonio, emailed to say that Castro’s post had triggered a discussion between him and friends.
“That’s not the San Antonio way. San Antonians work together and talk things out. Maybe Joaquin has been inWashington too long,” said Deason, who said he voted twice for Barack Obama.
Castro had defenders in a continuing Twitter debate.
HarvardUniversity legal scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted that Castro “is right to name publicly those who are funding Trump’s hateful ads, that put Hispanic lives at risk. That’s all public information. There’s no basis to complain of what Rep. Castro is doing to shine a light on it.”
“Is this a joke?” Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, a Democratic-aligned think tank, tweeted in response to GOP critics.
In an email later, Rosenberg said: “These attacks on Joaquin Castro are silly and the sign of a failing campaign desperate to change the conversation.”
Castro said that that the list he posted had been compiled earlier by a local chapter of Indivisible, an alliance of groups around the country that presses liberal causes in elections.
Among the Trump campaign contributors Castro named were Christopher “Kit” Goldsbury, developer of the Pearl complex, NuStar Energy Chairman Bill Greehey and Balous Miller, former CEO of the Bill Miller BBQ restaurant chain. Greehey also has contributed to Castro’s political campaigns.
Castro did not recommend a boycott, and he noted that his list of donors did not include phone numbers or home addresses — making reference to an episode during the 2016 Republican primary campaign, when Trump gave out a rival’s cellphone number.
Castro called the Republican complaints “a distraction from having to deal with the real issue, which is that President Trump has poisoned the GOP with racism. And there’s hardly anyone right now in the party willing to stand up to him.”
He said he hoped the hubbub would cause Trump to “stop using his campaign funds to demonize and dehumanize groups of people that makes them targets in this country.”
He added: “And I hope that people will choose not to contribute to that kind of effort.”