Ricky Martin attends GQ and Giorgio Armani Grammys After Party on February 8, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (2015 Getty Images)
Ricky Martin said he's had enough of Donald Trump.
In a scathing op-ed that ran on Univision.com on Wednesday, the Puerto Rican "Livin'' La Vida Loca"singer lashed out at the presidential candidate for repeatedly "harassing" Latinos.
“The fact that an individual like Donald Trump, a candidate for presidency of the United States for the Republican Party, has the audacity to continue to gratuitously harass the Latino community makes my blood boil,” the Puerto Rican singer wrote in Spanish. “When did this character assume he could make comments that are racist, absurd, and above all incoherent and ignorant about us Latinos?”
Martin’s op-ed came a day after Trump’s testy exchange with veteran Univision journalist Jorge Ramos, which led to Ramos’ expulsion from a press conference in Iowa on Tuesday. Martin slammed the business mogul while supporting Ramos for “doing his job.”
“From the beginning his intention was transparent: basically tell barbarities and lies to remain relevant in the public opinion, for votes of simply stay on the media’s radar,” Martin, 43, wrote of Trump. “Jorge Ramos was doing HIS JOB as a journalist at a press conference in which he appeared freely and democratically, representing one of the most important Latin television networks in the world and with the same right to freely exercise his profession with all other journalists.”
Martin is among a slew of Latino celebrities who have criticized Trump for his controversial comments about Mexicans.
Actress America Ferrera wrote an open letter in July thanking Trump for bringing Latinos together while Eva Longoria slammed him and invoked Adolf Hitler while discussing his remarks.
Martin said the action from Trump did not surprise him, but instead is surprised by the fact that “Hispanics continue to accept the aggressions and accusations of people like him who attack our dignity. Enough is enough!”
“We have to defeat the power that Trump pretends to have over Latinos, anchored in low rhetoric and xenophobic speech, which his campaign team is convinced works for him,” the singer continued. “Let’s show that our Latin race is to be respected, let’s not allow a political hopeful to plant his campaign in insult and humiliation. Let’s demand respect for those first generations of Latinos who to the United States and opened a path for us. We have fought for every right that we have today.”
The singer ended by saying that “xenophobia as a political strategy is the lowest” a person can go in search of political power.
“This is an issued that unites us and we need to battle it together, not just for us but for the evolution of humanity and those to come,” Martin wrote.
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