Hours after Trump's inauguration, WhiteHouse.gov/espanol shut down, and the new administration has yet to unveil a Spanish version of their website. Initially, getting it back up and running appeared to be a priority for Trump—Press Secretary Sean Spicer publicly promised an updated version of the Spanish site back in January, according to the Associated Press. "IT folks [are] working overtime," Spicer said at the time. "Trust me, it’s going to take a little bit more time, but we’re working piece by piece to get that done." But six months later, the site has still not been updated.
Since the website isn't operational, Spanish-speaking Trump supporters can follow White House updates via Twitter...or can they?
The official Spanish-language White House Twitter account, @LaCasaBlanca, is far less active than Trump's main account or the official POTUS twitter. Since its launch, @LaCasaBlanca has only uploaded 41 tweets, and over a third of them were from the day of a single Congressional address—not to mention that half are written in English. Kinda defeats the purpose of a SPANISH-language Twittter.
Plus, 11 of those Spanish tweets have typos, the AP reports, though none are as famous (yet) as "covfefe." Though translators have struggled to share Trump's rhetoric in other languages, it seems like the White House may have turned to Google Translate, not an actual Spanish speaker, as some have suggested on social media.
Helen Aguirre Ferre, the White House Director of Media Affairs, told the AP that a Spanish website should be anticipated later this year. She also threw shade at Obama's administration, noting that their Spanish website was uploaded nine months after his inauguration. However, even while under construction, the Obama administration's site had a Spanish homepage and Spanish bios of the President, Vice-President, First Lady and Second Lady, Newsweek reports, and the White House had a designated Spanish-language press official. (This position, Director of Hispanic Media, has been eliminated under the Trump administration.)
Activists see the lack of a Spanish website part of the larger problem of Trump's history of hate rhetoric towards Latinos and immigrants in general. "I believe they have written off the Latino vote as, 'I’m never going to get it, so why should I even bother?'" Luis A. Miranda Jr., a Democratic strategist, told the AP. This seems to be a long-standing problem for Trump—during his campaign, Trump alienated many Latino voters by saying, "This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish," and other comments that seem to imply America should not be as welcoming to Latinos. He even criticized Jeb Bush for answering a reporter's question in Spanish.
"@YoungYoung54: @JeriHyatt@megynkelly@JebBush So true. Jeb Bush is crazy, who cares that he speaks Mexican, this is America, English !!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2015
Some disagree with this criticism of the president, claiming that Trump DOES care about Latinos. Just take Javier Palomarez's word for it: the president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has said he's pleasantly surprised by Trump's other efforts at Latino outreach, according to BuzzFeed News. But reaching out in the native language of more than 41 million Americans is a step that's probably long overdue.
If Despacito can be the song of the summer, the White House website should be available in Spanish—and their Spanish tweets should probably be written by someone who's actually fluent in the language.