Ricky Martin: Trump's Rhetoric 'Racist, Absurd'

Ricky Martin has lambasted Donald Trump for using his presidential campaign "to gratuitously harass the Latin community."

The out entertainer expressed his outrage against Trump in a column published today on Univision's website, the day after Trump had his security team remove the network's news anchor Jorge Ramos from a campaign press conference in Iowa.

"Yesterday's episode against journalist Jorge Ramos, one of the most beloved and respected Latinos in world media, has gotten to the point of enough is enough," Martin writes in the piece, published in Spanish by Univision but translated into English by Billboard. Ramos repeatedly tried to ask Trump about immigration, and Trump told him he hadn't been called, then had him escorted out of the room.

Trump has frequently disparaged undocumented immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, over the course of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He has said Mexico sends rapists and other criminals to the United States, and he has said he would deport even the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants -- those born here are automatically citizens under U.S. law, something Trump would like to change -- then let "good people" back into the country.

The fact that Trump "has the audacity to continue to gratuitously harass the Latin community makes my blood boil," writes Martin, who was born in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. "When did this character assume he could make comments that are racist, absurd, and above all incoherent and ignorant about us Latinos? From the beginning his intention was transparent: basically tell barbarities and lies to remain relevant in the public opinion, for votes or simply to stay on the media's radar."

Latinos need to demand respect for themselves and their forebears, he continues, and "defeat the power that Trump pretends to have over Latinos."

"Xenophobia as a political strategy is the lowest you can go in search of political power." Martin concludes. "This is an issue that unites us and we need to battle it together, not just for us but for the evolution of humanity and those to come."