How Trump vs. DeSantis is playing on Miami’s conservative Spanish-language media
Speaking as a guest on a leading program on Miami’s Spanish-language Radio Mambí a week after the midterm elections, conservative Cuban-American businesswoman Remedios Diaz-Oliver inadvertently crossed an invisible line:
Diaz-Oliver said she felt “upset” by former President Donald Trump’s much-publicized shots at his presumed rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had just won reelection by a historic margin.
“The last thing we want is a civil war in the Republican Party,” Diaz-Oliver said.
The veteran and influential Mambí host, Ninoska Pérez Castellón, though, was having none of that talk on her show. Calling both great leaders, Pérez Castellón said Cuban Americans and conservatives are lucky to have Trump and DeSantis on their side.
“We love them both,” Diaz-Oliver readily agreed.
Local and national political writers and commentators have reported with relish on the emerging rivalry between Trump and his former pupil DeSantis, now a rising GOP star in his own right. But if anyone expected immediate fireworks on Miami’s Spanish-language talk radio and other media over the budding battle between Trump and DeSantis, both of whom have garnered a devoted following and a growing share of votes from Miami’s Hispanic voters, they may be disappointed.
In the days before and after Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he’s running for the White House two years after losing a reelection bid, hosts and commentators on some of Miami’s most popular Spanish-language radio programs and social-media platforms — long known for airing stridently partisan and conservative viewpoints — appeared to be studiously playing down any talk of a Trump-DeSantis clash.
The apparent consensus: Trump is our man, and there’s nothing to get excited about unless DeSantis declares he’s running.
“I hope it doesn’t turn into that,” Pérez Castellón said of the potential for open warfare between Trump and DeSantis. “That is, if DeSantis does run. But DeSantis hasn’t even opened his mouth.”
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That was as true on La Poderosa as on Mambí, old-line powerhouses that in spite of diminished, aging audiences remain broadly influential in Miami’s Cuban community. The same attitude was also reflected on broadcasts from newer arrivals, like self-styled pro-GOP Americano Media, and even on leading social-media Cuban-American influencer Alex Otaola’s daily YouTube show, usually a generous purveyor of sarcasm and vituperation directed at anyone not faithfully aligned with Trump.
“Leave it to him to make this country glorious and great again,” Otaola said Wednesday in what was otherwise a brief, even perfunctory description of Trump’s announcement at Mar-a-Lago, where, the YouTuber added, “he gave us the good news for us and the bad news for the Democrats.”
Trump v. DeSantis has already sparked verbal jabs between the pair of combative far-right politicians. Trump rolled out a new nickname for his erstwhile ally, “Ron DeSanctimonious,” while darkly threatening to reveal ”things about him that won’t be very flattering,” and dismissing him as “an average governor.”
READ MORE: GOP civil war pits Ron vs. Don with a presidential nomination at stake
DeSantis, responding to questions from reporters, avoided uttering Trump’s name but told them to “check out the scoreboard” from election night, when the governor won big in Florida while many of the former president’s prominent endorsements fizzled (although many high-profile candidates DeSantis backed also lost).
Nationally, the potential clash is already leading members of Congress, donors and pundits to take sides or remain neutral. It could present an especially thorny dilemma for Miami’s conservative Hispanic and Cuban-American voters, political operatives and media personalities, who widely and rabidly embraced the former president after he ascended to the White House, reversing what had been rising support for Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama.
Even in losing the 2020 race, Trump increased the GOP’s share of Miami’s Hispanic vote. That higher level of Republican support, analysts say, helped DeSantis become the first Republican gubernatorial nominee in 20 years to win Miami-Dade County, contributing significantly to his 19-point rout of Charlie Crist statewide.
READ MORE: Florida Latinos catapulted Republicans in the 2022 election. Are they the outliers?
In one measure of the hold Trump retains on local Hispanic and Cuban-American voters, Americano Media, founded by Republicans looking to create a national conservative Spanish-language media outlet, posted no fewer than 35 live updates to its Twitter feed during his Mar-a-Lago announcement.
In another Tweet, Americano Media noted DeSantis’ response to questions about intra-GOP warfare: “We just finished this election. People just need to calm down a bit.”
The radio callers
If radio hosts and commentators were cautious, it was decidedly a different matter when it came to listeners calling in to programs.
To judge from what’s a self-selected audience, conservative Hispanics and Cuban-Americans in Miami love DeSantis, to be sure.
Only they love Trump more.
READ MORE: ‘Florida loves Trump’: hundreds await former president at pre-election rally in Miami
Their comments sometimes verged on veneration. One caller to Pérez Castellón’s show compared Trump in his announcement to St. John the Baptist, exposing “everything that is bad” in the country. Another called him “all-powerful.”
“Trump is a perfect guy,” one male caller to Lucy Pereda’s morning show Wednesday on Mambí said. “Trump was doing things right and will keep doing things right. The name of our voice is Trump.”
Pereda, who called Trump’s announcement “very measured, very presidential,” added in what may have been a statement of the obvious: “At least here in the Cuban community, the support that exists in favor of Trump is overwhelming.”
Pereda guest Rey Anthony, a GOP consultant and operative, sidestepped when the host asked his view. “It seems unfair to ask people to decide for one or the other,” Anthony said.
The pro-Trump fervor is no surprise to Fernand Amandi, a partner at the multilingual polling firm Bendixen & Amandi International and a Democratic analyst. In a poll of Cuban-American voters he conducted earlier this year, 75% favored Trump in a head-to-head contest with DeSantis, he said.
And he has no doubt Trump would trounce DeSantis today among Cuban-American voters.
“One thing about Cuban voters, as many an indicted and reelected political leader can tell you, is that they are loyal to the bitter, bitter end. Once they consider you part of the family, you are family forever, warts and all,” Amandi said.
Cuban Americans will also keep on loving DeSantis, until the moment he actually challenges Trump, he said.
“The test will come if and when DeSantis enters the arena and presents himself as a challenger to the man who made him,” Amandi said. “They do not take well to someone taking on their sacred elephants, in this case. And Trump is beloved.”
On a Wednesday program on La Poderosa, where like Mambí and other outlets Democrats of all stripes are commonly referred to as “socialists” or “communists,” one caller blamed the left for trying to divide the GOP by playing up the Trump-DeSantis rivalry.
“People on the left are trying to take focus away from Trump and start focusing on another candidate, but we need to explain to people that we can’t let them fall into that trap,” the caller said. “The approach has to be slow for 2024.”
Dissenting voices were few and far between.
One caller to Pérez Castellón’s show said Trump should retire, comparing him to “a karaoke singer who used to sing in stadiums and now sings on a cruise ship,” and predicted DeSantis won’t replicate his popularity beyond Florida.
“That why there are primaries,” Pérez Castellón glumly responded.
A few callers suggested a workaround. For DeSantis, some had a bit of unsolicited advice: Let Trump run now, and wait your turn in 2028.
“We love DeSantis for what he’s done in Florida,” one woman calling in to Pérez Castellón’s “Ninoska en Mambí” show said on Wednesday afternoon before adding: “You have to give 100% of the credit to Trump, and after that to DeSantis.”
On Pereda’s show that morning, one caller seemed to bluntly sum up the prevailing sentiment: “DeSantis can wait four years.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 3:47 PM.