TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump joked Friday [10-6-17] afternoon at a Hispanic Heritage Month event that Latino leaders in the U.S. are sometimes ‘too tough,’ honoring the Hispanic community for its contributions to the nation.
‘You teach our children. You lead our churches. You protect our communities and you defend our nation. Among you are leaders in government, faith, and business. Fantastic people in this audience,’ Trump said at the White House on Friday. ‘I know some of them, and believe me, they’re very tough and they’re very smart. Sometimes they’re too tough. But that’s OK. I have to deal with it. I have to deal with it. Fantastic people.’
The lighthearted remark elicited a laugh from the crowd gathered in the White House’s State Dining Room. Trump seemed at ease Friday, delivering remarks that included a mixture of foreign and domestic policy seemingly peppered with his trademark off-the-cuff riffs. At one point, the president paused his speech altogether to leave the podium, apparently to shake hands with a Medal of Honor winner seated in the front row…
Amid a passage of his remarks section focused on ongoing hurricane recovery efforts, the president repeatedly pronounced Puerto Rico with an exaggerated Hispanic accent, which prompted a laugh from the audience. He also lauded Hispanic-American-owned small businesses, which he said are growing ‘at a tremendous rate, especially among our Latinas.’ “
-Louis Nelson, “Trump jokes: Sometimes Hispanics ‘are too tough’ but ‘I have to deal with it’,” Politico, Oct. 6, 2017 01:55pm