Polls show Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leads President Trump among critical Latino voters in Florida — but not in Miami-Dade County.
So Trump came to Miami Friday morning to chip away at more of Biden’s Latino support in South Florida — repeating along the way his false assertion that the Democrats want to turn the U.S. into the socialist regimes many of them left behind in Latin America.
Chanting "Four more years!" scores of Florida Latino voters came to the grand ballroom of Donald Trump’s resort in Doral for a roundtable with the president. Polls indicate Trump is pulling ahead of Biden with all voters in Florida — partly because he’s grabbing more of the state’s Latino vote than experts expected.
At the Doral gathering, business owners thanked the president for what they called his pro-Latino economic policies. Trump meanwhile warned the crowd that the "radical left" had taken over Biden's campaign and party.
"You know it could happen here [if Biden wins]," Trump said. "This would be a Venezuela on major steroids, OK? This would be a Venezuela that would be a very large version of it. But it could happen...
“Almost more than any people you know about the radical left ... You’ve got big, big examples ... and I think that’s one of the reasons we’re doing so well with Hispanics.”
The pro-Trump Latino crowd seemed unbothered by remarks the president made this week that he might not recognize the November election results if he loses.
Latin America — including Venezuela — has a long history of authoritarian leaders who have ignored unfavorable election outcomes. But Venezuelan Trump supporters like Liliana Rodriguez of Cutler Bay asserted the president is right to worry about voter fraud robbing him of victory.
“Trump knows what the heck is going on and so do we," said Rodriguez, wearing a Trump cap and facemask. "We lived with this every day in Venezuela — they change things, they manipulate things. And they’re trying to do that here, but people here are not stupid.”
FBI director Christopher Wray refuted Trump this week and told the U.S. Senate he sees no evidence of potential widespread voter fraud.
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