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Donald Trump’s simple victory in Florida, traditionally a battleground state, got here after the Republican Party efficiently co-opted the Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American vote, that are in vital numbers round Miami.
Around 55 per cent of Florida’s Cuban-American vote went to Trump, in accordance to NBC information exit ballot figures. Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, has been Trump’s main residence, and he has made quite a few journeys to the state in the course of his presidency.
An essential automobile of the Trump marketing campaign’s profitable outreach to Latino voters (regardless that it appeared doubtless on Friday that the President will fail to win re-election), has been Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion organisation, a few of whose largest stars are Latin American, and whose president, Dana White, threw the total weight of his large cagefighting empire behind Trump. Follow US elections LIVE updates
The Trump marketing campaign turned to a few of UFC’s fighters to create a mini-movement known as ‘Fighters against Socialism’.
What is that this ‘Fighters against Socialism’ motion?
The UFC has at all times had relationship with the Trump household, and has benefitted from it. And Trump has used the UFC’s Latin-American demographic of fighters to marketing campaign for him.
The ‘Fighters against Socialism’ motion noticed UFC fighters come out and profess their help for Trump, claiming {that a} victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would spell the top of their “freedom”.
Biden was falsely portrayed as a “socialist” belonging to or below the affect of the “radical” far left of the Democratic Party — a portrayal that always conjures up pictures that Cubans and Venezuelans who fled authoritarian socialist or communist regimes to the United States, discover scary.
How concerned had been the UFC fighters in Trump’s marketing campaign?
The poster boy for ‘Fighters against socialism’ was Jorge Masvidal, whose Cuban father escaped the regime of Fidel Castro on a self-made raft. Masvidal — who made UFC historical past in 2019 by knocking out Olympian Ben Askren inside 5 seconds — grew to become the face of Cuban-Americans who believed that the Democrats successful Florida would imply a return to the socialist methods of Cuba that had pressured his father to search for a brand new life in the USA.
“The Democrats just think they are entitled to the Latino vote. They think we just have to hand it over to them,” Masvidal mentioned at one in every of Trump’s rallies. “That’s right. We sure as hell don’t. They’ve got to show us what they can do for us. We aren’t going to buy the same wolf tickets and false promises that destroyed great countries like Venezuela and Cuba. It’s not going to happen.”
Masvidal was part of the ‘Fighters against Socialism’ bus tour that went to Tampa, Orlando, Coconut Creek, and Miami and spoke at every occasion.
The Trump marketing campaign then went to the American Top Team Gym in Miami, a home for a few of the UFC’s greatest fighters — lots of whom took footage with Trump and vowed to help him through the marketing campaign.
Fighters like Henry Cejudo additionally got here out in help of Trump. Cejudo, whose mother and father had been immigrants from Mexico, is an Olympic gold medallist (London 2012, wrestling) and has been inducted into the wrestling Hall of Fame.
UFC fighters Colby Covington and Justin Gaethje have additionally actively been part of Trump campaigns.
Is the UFC as an entire politically lively?
UFC president White and Trump have been pals for a very long time. Dana White spoke on the Republican National Convention.
When the novel coronavirus was starting to shut down companies in America, Trump appeared to the UFC and different sports activities to begin as soon as once more in a bid to present that the US economic system was prepared for enterprise.
When UFC 249, the primary sporting occasion to occur through the pandemic, was going down, Trump appeared in an ESPN broadcast, congratulating White and the UFC on efficiently holding the occasion.
The UFC’s help for Trump was additional highlighted in direction of the final days of the marketing campaign when White particularly requested individuals to vote “in person”, a message that Republicans had been making to their voters and differed from the Democrats’ message of voting via mail-in ballots.
In one other native political race, former UFC mild heavyweight champion, Tito Ortiz received a seat on town council of Huntington Beach, California. Ortiz, 45, has been a longtime supporter of Donald Trump since making an look on the ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ in 2007. “Good for him,” White congratulated Ortiz on his election.
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