Speaker 1: It is great to have Rick Sanchez joining us today, veteran journalist and Emmy
Award winner, who is the co-founder, CEO and president of Agua Media.
Rick, it's so great to have you on.
Speaker 3: Listen, David, I am so proud of you as a fellow Latino.
Everything you do, your determination, your ability to always fight for the little guy.
Your consistency, general fairness, your messaging.
You do a great job, David, and you ought to be commended.
And I just got to be told I got to tell you, with all transparency, I've been a fan for
some time.
I've been listening to what you do and you do a really great job.
Speaker 1: So I'm shocked and flattered.
But also it provides like a really good segue way into when we think about the dynamics
of the American Spanish speaking or Latino origin community there.
It's such a diverse community.
Many people see me.
They say, David, you look white.
How is it that you're South American?
And of course, you and I and many people in our community, we know about the diversity.
But politically, it's also quite a diverse group.
And as as I want to hear from you, the conventional wisdom is often Cubans and Venezuelans.
They often come to the U.S. They become Republicans because they see that as a way to fight that
which they left in their home countries.
Those from many other South American countries and Central American tend to be more Democratic
leaning.
Is that the is that still accurate today?
Speaker 3: I think to a certain extent it is.
Unfortunately, the it's overplayed.
So what happens is, like with the election, with Trump, for example, Trump did, in fact,
you know, he gets his he gets credit for winning Florida.
Unfortunately, he didn't win Nevada.
He didn't win Texas.
He didn't win anywhere else in the country.
70% of the people in the United States are not Venezuelans or Argentineans or Cubans.
They are, for the most part, either Mexican or from other parts of Central America.
But that message gets lost, David.
So still, the message seems to be that all the Latinos are moving to the Republican camp.
And that's not true.
Latinos continue to vote basically two thirds Democrat and one third Republican.
And that's changed a little bit over time.
But it seems to me that the message that's coming certainly from the right, the right
is spending millions and millions of dollars with Americano and all these other front groups
to try to bring in and Soros, for example, to try and bring in Latinos.
They get credit for trying, but considering the amount of money they're putting into it
and considering how little competition they're getting from Democrats to try and keep Latinos
there, they actually aren't doing that.
Well, I wouldn't score them highly on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Mean during those two things I just.
Speaker 1: Said it's interesting because you often touted it is, oh, in 2020, Trump increased
his share of the Latino vote by 8%.
But when you start with a small number even increasing, it is not super impressive.
But that being said, if the trend continued, it actually would be huge.
Hugely significant.
Speaker 3: Well, sure.
And they even did well in this last election if you want to go by decimal points.
Yeah.
And I think to a certain extent, look, I mean, let's just call this what it is.
How much can Latinos be told that they're rapists and criminals by certain segments
of the Republican Party, like Cruella de Vil running for governor in Arizona?
And, you know, after a while, it's obviously going to create a backlash.
The problem and I wish what I would see is more David Pakman and more Rick Sanchez is
and I'm not just trying to say that we're the only ones that got this thing figured
out, but I'd like to see that on the NBCs in the CBS is in the CNN and other places
where they don't just kowtow to Latinos and tell you about how much they like you, but
actually understand that we're the fifth largest GDP in the world.
If we were a country that 80% of us are American citizens, that 30, 40, 41% of us under the
age of 50 speak English as our language.
None of these things are proliferated.
So I don't I think both the Republican Party beaten the crap out of the Latinos and then
the Democratic Party, unfortunately, not going far enough to really represent or understand
Latinos.
Almost even taking them for granted to a certain extent creates this dynamic that we're in
right now.
And it's got to change on both sides, obviously.
Speaker 1: One of the stories that's been told in the political world for at least ten
years, if not even longer, is there's these demographic shifts happening in states like
Florida and Texas.
And part of it is age related, but a lot of it is the growth of the Hispanic or Latino
population, and it's just going to make it difficult and eventually impossible for Republicans.
To win Florida and Texas, and it hasn't played out.
And many people are looking at the numbers and saying, okay, is this happening?
Is it?
Is it going to play out?
What is happening with that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you have to take one thing into account, and this is maybe
the most important thing.
Latinos, the common age of a Latino, David, is 11 on, say, 11.
That's the note, right?
Scientifically speaking, mathematically speaking, the common age of a Latino is 11 like that
number in because the common age of a white Anglo-Saxon non-Latino in the United States
is 58.
So what that tells you is because Latinos are young, they're going to be voting in the
future.
More in line with what we just saw, some young people voting in this last election.
So what they're going to care about is not communist, the communists like we hear today
in parts of south Florida, but they're probably going to be voting more in line with regular,
you know, American young people.
And that would not bode well for the Republicans.
But right now, yeah, Republicans have done a great job in South Florida, in particular,
bringing in the Venezuelan and the Cuban vote and the others who come from certain parts
of Latin America by telling them that if you vote Democrat, you're voting for Chavez, you're
voting for Fidel Castro because all Democrats are communists.
Speaker 1: One of the things that applies generally when it comes to targeting young
voters is that the right seems much more committed financially to setting up things like Turning
Point USA, sending Ben SHAPIRO to college campuses and paying handsome speaking fees,
etc.
You really don't see it as much on on the left.
And it seems that the same thing applies specifically to the targeting of Latino voters, where there's
lots of right wing Spanish language political content on the radio in the United States,
but really not much alternative to that.
Speaker 3: You know, that's kind of one of the reasons I'm doing Iowa Media, because
it's really a bit of a passion project for myself and for Solomon Trujillo, my partner,
you know, saw.
And I realized that if we don't get the story out ourselves and thank God we have a David
Pakman who's also a Latino, who's also an influential member of the media community,
to be able to tell the story that unfortunately, I wish MSNBC would tell, but they dodge, let's
face it, we're 20% of the population in the United States and we are underrepresented
across the board, whether it's Hollywood or whether it's on cable television.
Nancy Pelosi said something interesting.
God love her and I know she made a mistake.
And she's an older woman and stuff, but she should have known better soon after DeSantis
did this stunt where he literally hijacked people or kidnaped people and sent them to
another state from Texas.
Her response was, What a shame, because imagine the farmers in Florida could have used some
of those immigrants, for example, to pick their fruit and vegetables.
And I myself, Nancy, God bless you.
But that's not what you say the answer is right now.
And in the future, Latinos will be the doctors, the business people.
They'll be the people who create this unbelievably enterprising economy of ours.
They tend to hire more.
They tend to start more small businesses.
You need to know that, Nancy, when you're talking about Latinos, and that's the problem,
and we don't get it at CNN, we don't get it at the MSNBC scenes.
And those are the ones who are supposed to be our stalwarts.
And in that example and it's not the beat up, you know, Nancy Pelosi.
But yeah, you know, that's that's the wrong message.
That's the wrong counter to the other argument.
That's important, David.
And that's why you and I, guys like you and I are out there to share these things.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I want to ask you about, and I have no idea what your position
is on this, so I could be stepping into a minefield.
Here is one of the things that when you talk about the conversation among the left and
Latino Americans has to do with the gender neutralizing of the Spanish language.
And I'm talking about Latin X and I'm so that's in English, Latin X and then there's a movement
in Spanish as well where it would take something like the word amigos or amigos, which are
gendered and create a new one, which is a me guess with an E now.
My view is this is a really bad idea.
I don't think this makes any sense.
Most people in Central and South America don't use that.
Later example I gave Latin X is mostly being proposed by white Americans.
I think that this if this becomes the thing that is the topic in the U.S. among the left
with this population, I think it's a disaster.
Where are you on that?
Speaker 3: We're just throwing the right a bone to be able to use to coalesce Latinos
against Democrats.
And then they could go with that woke thing that, you know, is so amorphous and opaque.
I don't even know what the hell it means.
But yeah, don't do that.
I'm so proud of my mother for everything she gave to me, as you are of your mother.
And your mother is a Latina.
And my mother is a Latina and my father is a Latino.
I can't think of describing Paco, my dad, as a Latin ex, you know.
What does that mean to me?
Besides, if you're going to do it with us Latinos, then you also have to do it with
Italians because they do use a non gender neutral, you know, language, because they
all come from romance languages and Romanians and the French and Portuguese and everything,
so leave well enough alone.
As far as our friend Willie Shakespeare said, when it comes to something like this and let's
tackle the really big issues that are affecting Latinos in the United States and not change
their nomenclature.
It just seems like a bridge too far.
It almost seems like almost a little insulting to me.
So when it comes to Latin X, in fact, when it comes to all colorations, I don't think
we should be brown.
I don't think we should be yellow.
I don't think we should be black.
I think you're an Argentinean American and I am a Cuban-American.
And my friend Jerry over here, who I'm looking at is a Mexican-American.
And somebody can be a Jamaican American or an Irish American.
It's a better description.
In the old days when you called someone a colored person, it was insulting.
And it seems like today we want to bring that back and somehow celebrate it.
I'm against colors.
Let's call each other as descriptively as we can.
As we learned in journalism school so that we understand how people are described.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about immigration and specifically Dhaka.
Dhaka, to me, seems like it would be the lowest hanging fruit that both Democrats and Republicans
would be incentivized to figure out and deal with and say, okay, here's something we've
fixed.
So it's not just endlessly a, quote crisis.
Now, of course, the term crisis is exaggerated and it's used, you know, right.
Leading up to an election.
And then suddenly you don't hear about it for a year.
We know all of that stuff.
Okay.
Yeah, but on the DOCA issue, it seems overwhelmingly popular to say we're not going to send people
back to other countries who came here through no fault of their own as minors with parents.
Why hasn't it happened?
Is part of it that neither side wants to allow the other side to be able to take credit for
that?
Speaker 3: I think, to be honest with you, obviously, Republicans have had an odd and
almost cruel view of that and have for many, many years, with some exceptions.
You know, we can give some credit to George Bush and we can give some credit hell even
to Lindsey Graham at some point.
I don't know what the heck happened to that guy.
There was a time when he had a different way of thinking about things like this.
Yeah, but unfortunately, Democrats have never really made this, including, you know, President
Obama have never really made this the priority that they that they needed to make it to to
to really make sure that they were, you know, making strides with the Latino community where
it matters, you know, right here.
And I think, you know, as we like to say and that's, you know, I think to a fault.
And I think oftentimes Democrats, you know, as I said in that famous and that's in that
famous documentary that Billy did, you know, the thing about Democrats is they're always
trying to do the right thing and please everybody.
And Republicans could give a crap they just want to win.
So Republicans don't care who they insult and what they do as long as in the end they
can win.
That's kind of the McConnell message, right, in many ways, which it's interesting now that
they're trying to kick him out and Democrats instead have always kind of overplayed things
and been concerned about how it's going to be seen.
And well, if we come out too heavy on this, then we could lose middle America because
we might lose votes in the Midwest.
And they overthink things so much and in the end, they don't do enough.
And I think if Democrats had gotten on board, Dakota, for example, really got on board,
I think they would be faring better now and not fighting, you know, between 60, 65 and
70% of the vote.
And really, they would probably be topping out around 80% because remember, the people
that are affected by this especially are the people who are the larger part of the Latino
community, the Mexican American and the Central American part of those Latino communities.
So it would make a huge difference, I think will.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we will at least see some progress on that at some point.
It may take Democrats allowing Republicans to do it under their watch to get that win.
And the question is whether Democrats would go for it because it's the right thing to
do even if they don't get all of the political benefit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, in this last election, I watched something happen.
There was a guy who turned out to be a pretty awful human being.
But for some reason, he and I used to talk a lot.
He would call me at least once a week when he was running Fox News, and that's Roger
Ailes.
And he used to say to me and said publicly, in fact, that the funny thing about Republicans
is they don't tell you what they.
Think they just show up to the polling place and show their actions with their vote and
they don't go around giving their opinions.
Now, what a difference between what just happened in this election, not just with Latinos, but
with others.
Republicans are now the hippies of the 1970s.
They're the ones having parades.
They're the ones putting it out there.
I mean, I would never go screaming down the middle of the street, holding a banner of
any candidate or putting bumper stickers all over my house and doing all of those things.
And that's what you see now with with with Republicans.
And you invite them over to your backyard barbecue.
And he happens to be your neighbor and he's Republican and immediately starts telling
you who who's going to vote for who he hates.
And you're like, okay, here, want a beer?
It's the weirdest.
It's the weirdest thing.
It's strange.
Why are you telling me this?
And that used to be what Democrats were kind of like in the sixties and seventies.
Now Democrats just keep their mouths shut.
They wait.
And when it comes to vote, they voted against it.
And that's kind of what we saw in this last midterm.
And it made me think of the flip that maybe happened in our society.
Yeah.
And Roger Ailes captured the quiet Republican and created a television network for them.
Right.
And brought them out to the point now where they're I guess they're loud and proud, but
not effective.
Speaker 1: Right.
They're not quiet anymore, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: No, no.
I mean, that's the point.
It's almost like it's counterintuitive or ironically different.
Speaker 1: We've been speaking with Rick Sanchez, who's the co-founder, CEO and president of
Agua Media.
Rick, really a pleasure having you on.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be with you as well.
David, thanks so much.
And you know, by most ballot.