Jorge Ramos: Dubya "thinks" he speaks Spanish ... and English
Mexico-born Univision anchor-reporter Jorge Ramos and President George W Bush have more than a name in common.
Ramos, who received B&C/Multichannel News Lifetime Achievement Award in Hispanic Television on Thursday, recalled in his acceptance speech the well-known coincidence that the English translation of his name is “George Bush,” and that he told the president this in an effort to make sure he would remember his name.
The coincidence paid off when Bush gave him the first TV interview as president. Ramos, who said he has struggled with a thick accent when speaking in English ("I don’t even understand myself in English," he joked), brought the house down when he revealed another Ramos-Bushism.
Noting that many people don’t realize the growing power of Hispanic media, particularly given that Hispanics are projected to surpass the non-Hispanic white population in the U.S. in the next 100 years—Ramos recalled that Bill Clinton said he hoped to be the last president who didn’t speak Spanish.
Clinton’s wish came true, said Ramos—sort of.
"George W Bush is the first president to speak Spanish—or thinks he speaks Spanish," said Ramos, before adding "He also thinks he speaks English.”
monica commented:
Actually, candidates as far back as John F. Kennedy have created Spanish-language campaign ads.
You can easily find an example on Youtube. It's legit, seeing as the first time I saw it was in a documentary about "the Latino Vote".
JK commented:
ok, fair enough. How about the English part?
chris commented:
actually George Bush does speak spanish..fluently. When he met with Vicente Fox, their meetings would be in spanish, and his campaign commercials were also in Spanish, so is this just another Liberal complaint? I don's know of any other candidate prior to Bush who actually took the time to create Spanish campaign commercials which included the candidate actually speaking to people