Then Trump doubled support among young Cubans exiled in Florida

On the desk in Alex Otaola’s cramped but technologically advanced studio in downtown Miami is a scrap of paper with today’s advertisers. The first to come out is Donald Trump’s election campaign, followed by two local Republican politicians, a dentist, one of Miami’s top plastic surgeons, and then another Donald Trump ad.

The question is whether Trump really needs more publicity than he already gets on Alex Otaloa’s daily YouTube show. During the fall, Otaola’s immensely popular show focused almost exclusively on Donald Trump. If Joe Biden wins the election, Otaloa warns, the United States runs the risk of becoming a socialist state that remembers the country he and his parents fled from: Cuba.

– I support everything that Trump has done as president in regards to relations with Cuba. He has done everything possible to weaken and overthrow his dictatorship and give Cuba freedom. Barack Obama and Joe Biden seem more interested in going to Cuban affairs, Otaola tells DN.

In a recent opinion poll 56 percent of young Cuban immigrants in Florida say they will vote for Trump, compared to just 22 percent in the 2016 election. If Trump wins in Florida, this can be explained by this change, as elections in the state they are usually very even. According to the Spanish-speaking Florida Republicans, no one has had more influence on the political preferences of young Cubans in Florida than Alex Otaola.

He is young, gay, only speaks Spanish and adores Donald Trump. In the studio, a calendar of naked firefighters hangs next to a large cardboard cutout depicting Trump.

Outside of Florida, he’s relatively unknown, but here in Miami he’s seen as a key political player. His YouTube show has three full-time employees who help him broadcast every day from the studio in Brickell, Miami’s nicest neighborhood. It reaches half a million viewers a week.

When i ask why you think three out of every four Latin Americans outside of Florida vote Democrats answers in an instant.

– Telemundo and Univision brainwash them.

Telemundo and Univison are the two main Spanish-language television channels in the United States, whose news coverage is relatively conventional and reminiscent, for example, of CNN, with reports from social networks interspersed with political debate programs that are sometimes critical of Trump .

A long-standing problem for Florida Republicans has been that many of the state’s conservatives cannot be reached through traditional right-wing outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, as Florida Latin Americans prefer Spanish-language news sources. .

So now the Republicans have began to establish a parallel ecosystem of alternative media in Spanish. Young Cubans like Otaola are at the forefront. His show has become a Spanish equivalent of Fox News’ right-wing populist late-night show, in which hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity pay tribute to Trump and warn of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Alex Otaola’s message seems to have a special impact among Cubans here because he describes himself as a “former democrat.” When Trump won the election four years ago, Otaola criticized him as “hateful and divisive.” What has changed?

– The Democrats. They have become too yellow with the Cuban regime. Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, even visited Cuba to study its healthcare system. Many of them call themselves socialists, says Otaola.

It was Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders, who became the Democratic presidential candidate. But here in South Florida, it seems that Sanders’ star status characterizes the image of contemporary Democrats. Biden may have made it clear that he does not belong to the party’s left flank, but Otaola is convinced that Sanders and the radical young left will rule the Democrats if they regain power.

In the Spanish-language Trump campaign commercials seen in Florida, images of Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro are cut along with images of Biden and left-wing Democrats such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

He goes home to young Cubans like Otaola and the half million who watch his show every week.

– Biden wants to raise taxes to pay for public health care. It will end as in Cuba, says Otaola.

The same week that we meet In Florida, Donald Trump takes a short break from his other duties as president to dedicate ten minutes to an interview with Otaola.

During the interview, Otaola asks soft questions that Trump addresses with lengthy monologues about his own excellence. When Otaola asks to hear about Trump’s strategy against the communist regime in Cuba, Trump responds, “I think I have 95 percent support among Cubans in the polls here in Florida.” (Trump’s support among Cuban-Americans in Florida is of about 59 percent, not 95 percent). ).

I ask Otaola if he is concerned about Trump’s five years of xenophobic remarks against Latin Americans.

– No, those are quotes taken out of context by the liberal media. I am Latin American, I am gay, I am an immigrant. But Trump still wanted to meet me for an interview. I think that shows that he is not xenophobic. He has nothing against Spanish speakers, says Otaola.

Among Trump voters There is strong opposition to Spanish-speaking immigrants in particular. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump campaigned to make English the official language of the United States (the United States does not currently have an official language). 47 percent of Trump voters say they get upset when they hear languages ​​other than English in the neighborhood.

In the 2016 elections, Trump also made a political gesture of refusing to buy advertising on Spanish-language platforms. As the first presidential candidate in modern times, his campaign site did not have a Spanish-speaking section. As president, he initially removed the Spanish-speaking section of the official White House site, despite the fact that the United States has 53 million residents with Spanish as their first language.

But before the presidential election this year The Trump campaign has taken a 180 degree turn. There is now a full campaign site in Spanish, and Trump buys advertising daily on dozens of Spanish-language channels and sites, especially on Alex Otaola’s own show. He’s showing clear results in Florida, where Trump’s support among Hispanics is twice as high as in the rest of the country.

If the polls among Florida’s young Cubans are correct, it could pose problems for the future prospects of Democrats here. Democratic strategists have long viewed America’s gradual shift toward greater diversity as a potential benefit to the party, as an overwhelming proportion of blacks and Hispanics vote for Democrats.

But among the hundreds of thousands of newly arrived Americans who have come to the United States from Cuba since the 1990s, support for Republicans has risen.

In the Cuban neighborhood of Miami Little Havana doesn’t have many Trump posters, but there is no shortage of Trump supporters. On the steps of a flamenco-pink brick apartment building, Xiomare and Luis Maqueira cool off in the shade. They belong to the older generation of Florida Cubans who vote loyally for the Republicans.

Luis wears shorts patterned like the American flag and smokes a thick cigar. He recently lost his job at a local restaurant that closed during the pandemic. His son has also lost his job. They don’t blame Trump for these problems.

– We suffered the pandemic, especially economically. But that’s not Trump’s fault. He has done what he could. I blame the system in Washington and the slow state apparatus. The United States started to go downhill when Obama became president and has never been back since, he says.