NPR commentator Cokie Roberts said Monday that the only thing that can control the Latino vote for a favorable outcome for Republicans is “birth control.”
In a segment with NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Inskeep asked about the high early voting turnout among Latinos and whether that could be beneficial for Hillary Clinton, given her lead among non-white voters in the polls and Trump’s derogatory comments about Latinos.
“It’s another sort of reason for the electoral college,” Roberts said. “You wouldn’t be paying that much attention to Latinos nationwide—they’re only about 12 percent of the vote.”
“Clearly there’s been a tremendous organization to get them voting and that’s a direct result of ‘build the wall,'” she added, referencing one of Trump’s signature policy positions on immigration.
Carlson argued that if Texas were to go to the Democrat this year, there’d be “no need” for future presidential elections because the numbers would be so overwhelmingly against the Republican Party. He argued for “tightened immigration” or more attempts from Republicans to win Latino votes if that were to happen, but Roberts asserted that only birth control could help the GOP in that scenario.
“Well, immigration wouldn’t do it,” she said. “You’d have to do birth control to make it useful to Republicans.”
Both Carlson and Inskeep attempted to respond over each other before Inskeep moved on to a final, unrelated question.
Roberts responded to backlash about her comment, saying that she was just pointing out how many “wonderful Latinos” are in America.
Folks, folks, folks! If course you have it wrong. I meant that there are already millions of wonderful Latinos in the country. Thank heaven!
— Cokie Roberts (@CokieRoberts) November 7, 2016
Listen to the segment below:
Cokie, Cokie! You’re so wrong! Sterilization would work too!
classy as always… learn that one from George Will or Tucker Carlson?
But the GOP hates birth control. Self-inflicted fubar…
Talk about being hoisted upon your own penis, I mean petard…
Ooooooh. Unforced error!
I thought there was a bit of irony in her birth control comment. I believe she is Catholic and that makes it more amusing. I do not believe her twiiter excuse response.