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Mmm, Taco Trucks Protested Donald Trump — PHOTOS
In what might be the yummiest political protest ever, taco trucks were boycotting Donald Trump outside the business magnate's hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday. The Culinary Workers Union 226 of Las Vegas assembled a wall of taco trucks to protest against Trump's racist campaign against Latinxs.
"Having these taco trucks around, having music playing and at the same time registering people to vote — and obviously people here want to vote against Donald Trump — there is a celebration of culture happening," Pili Tobar, the communications director of Latino Victory Project, one of the organizations that helped coordinate the protest, told NBC News. "It is a really interesting mix of emotions, and people are excited and having fun with it." The union is also working to register voters during the protest, in an attempt to increase Latinx turnout on Nov. 8.
The Hispanic food/tacos theme has been ongoing for some time. If you want to get real technical about it, Trump started the whole thing during his announcement speech last June when he made the blanket statement that all Mexicans are rapists, to which, understandably, the Latinx American population did not respond too kindly. Though Latinxs have typically supported Democrats in presidential elections, the margins have been extremely pronounced in this cycle — Hillary Clinton captured about 70 percent of Latinx support in a recent poll as opposed to Trump's 17 percent.
Trump exacerbated his problem with Latinxs when he tweeted a wildly culturally insensitive message on Cinco De Mayo (a day that has zero relevance to all Spanish-speaking countries except Mexico) "Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!" Trump announced with gusto, to the sound of an epic backfiring. Comedians, media outlets, and generally enraged Americans absolutely dragged Trump on social media, calling out his benevolent racism for what it really was.
The Latinx irony was fueled once again after a Trump surrogate proclaimed that Latinxs were a problem that needed to be dealt with, lest the country face dire consequences. "“My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner,” Marco Gutierrez, the founder of the group Latinos for Trump, said during an interview on MSNBC back in September.
That, however, backfired, too — people instantly took to Twitter to rejoice about the taco-plentiful future, and the attempt at using bigotry to scare people turned into another massive joke for the Trump campaign.
This most recent protest Wednesday was likely most directly related to that taco truck comment, but the relationship between the Trump campaign and Mexican food has been going on for quite some time.
Bittersweetly, the final debate means the true beginning of the end of election season and there won't be these constant campaign gaffes to groan, or laugh, at.