What’s more scary – Trump thinks Latinos like him? Or that they do?

I’m not sure which concept confounds me the most – the idea that Republican presidential fantasizer Donald Trump believes that Latino voters actually like him?

TRUMP: Thinks Latinos love him

Or the idea that they actually do?

THOSE ARE NOT contradictory concepts. It actually is very possible for both to be true, once we realize that those numbers Trump touts from the Nevada caucus this week (the first state in which there is anything resembling a significant Latino population) are quite so limited.

So it may well be true that those exit polls (the only data available, since no one officially keeps track of the ethnicity of every person who bothers to show up to vote) show more Latinos who participated in the Republican caucus backed Trump instead of any of his GOP opponents.

Not even either of the Cubano boys – Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida – who also have dreams of being the guy who gets to repeal President Barack Obama’s executive orders that tried to impose immigration reform bit by bit.

But the simple fact is that most of the Latinos who bother to get politically involved wind up (often by default) on the Democratic side of the equation.

A STUDY BY the Miami-based Latino Decisions organization put it well – 44 percent Latino support for Trump (the figure he claims) is most likely only about 7 percent of all Latinos.

Which may be more than either Cruz or Rubio got. But it still is a pitiful figure. It would seem the reality is that most Latinos who in Nevada were politically active enough to participate in the caucuses were going for Bernie Sanders – and Trump’s gauche flaunting of his wealth makes him the absolute LAST person they’d ever consider backing on an Election Day.

SANDERS: Likely the real Nev. Latino preference

Although I’m sure more Latinos are interested in Hillary Clinton for president as well, and will wind up backing whichever Democrat prevails come the November general election.

That’s what happens when you kick off you campaign with trash talk about Mexico and Mexicans – all Latinos realize the kind of people who spew such trash talk are too dumb to make nationality distinctions, and are going to be sympathetic all the way around.

SO THE IDEA that Latinos like Trump? Pure caca! Unless you’re Trump, who has shown that fact and truth have no place in the nonsense he’s willing to spew on the campaign trail.

CLINTON: Also preferred by Nev. Latinos

But within the Republican election cycle, I have to admit that I’m more intrigued by the idea that Trump got more Latinos to vote for him than any other individual candidate – including both Cruz and Rubio, who some people think Latinos ought to vote in knee-jerk reaction for.

But if either of them were to win the Republican presidential nomination, I have no doubt that both would find themselves widely ignored by Latino voters nationwide. The perception on both is that they’re so willing to appease the conservative ideologues who have a touch of xenophobic and nativist thought in their ways that both would wind up siding against Latino interests on so many issues.

The crude way to say it is that they both probably wish they were white boys. I’ll be the first to admit there are some Latino people who think, and feel, that way.

That Rubio and Cruz can't take GOP Latino vote ...

BUT RATHER THAN vote for a Latino who shares your self-centered thought process, it seems they picked Trump. Why vote for a Latino white boy-wannabe when they can vote for a real-live white boy like Trump.

Particularly one who’s rich and you can pretend on some level he actually cares about you. Which he really doesn’t – and that’s his appeal to the so-called uneducated vote whom Trump now boasts like him as well.

... from Trump truly is sad

Cruz and Rubio – who I’m sure would resent the Latino label and would prefer to be called Cuban if you want to think of their ethnic origins – can’t even get Latino people just like themselves to support their political dreams.

Which winds up offering aid and comfort to the delusions of those who think that a garish real estate developer from New York is somehow fit to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” on that upcoming cold day of Jan. 20, 2017, when all this presidential campaign trash talk becomes just a collection of bad memories.

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