In New Mexico, President Trump falsely declared at a campaign rally Monday that Latinos support his border wall, proclaiming, “We love our Hispanics.” During the rally in Rio Rancho, Trump pointed to Steve Cortes, a former paid on-air contributor at CNN and member of Trump’s 2020 campaign committee. 

President Donald Trump: “He happens to be Hispanic. He happens to be Hispanic, but I’ve never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a WASP than I do. … Nobody loves the Hispanics more. What do you like more, the country or the Hispanics? He says the country. I don’t know. I may have to go for the Hispanics, to be honest with you. We got a lot of Hispanics. We love our Hispanics.”

In response, the progressive political group Latino Victory tweeted, “This is racist. This is xenophobic. This is the type of rhetoric that led to the biggest anti-Latino massacre in modern history.” That’s a reference to last month’s mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a white supremacist with an assault rifle killed 22 people and wounded 24 others. The killer published a hate-filled manifesto that echoed President Trump’s language on migrants from Latin America.