On Friday night, after the supposedly nonpartisan ALMA (American Latino Media Arts) Awards, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, actress Eva Longoria, and Al Madrigal of the Daily Show used a post-show panel to mock Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose father is an immigrant from Cuba. They implied Cruz was neither Hispanic nor American.
Madrigal, the Daily Show correspondent, said, “I want to say Ted Cruz. Canadian first.”
“No one is gonna claim Ted Cruz,” he half-jokingly said.
Wagner, who is not Hispanic, then started laughing and half-jokingly mocked Cruz as “not an American.”
“You’re speaking on behalf of the Hispanic community of America, rejecting Ted Cruz as an Ambassador,” Wagner said to Madrigal with laughter.
Longoria, who did not even learn how to speak Spanish until she was an adult, then dismissively said that “some people voted for him [in] Texas,” implying she did not for for Cruz.
MSNBC televised the ALMA Awards, and Wagner held a panel discussion on the network after the show with: Longoria, who was a co-chair of the President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign; Al Madrigal; Janet Murguia, the president of the National Council of La Raza which sponsors the awards show; and Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino.
Murguia and Teresa Kumar then reminded the panelists that their respective organizations, La Raza and Voto Latino, were “nonpartisan,” even as they shared in the laughs.
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