Pitbull has a strong message for Donald Trump: Watch out for “El Chapo!”
The artist delivered that message to raucous applause after accepting an award at Premios Juventud, a Univision awards ceremony that aired on Thursday night.
The drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped from a Mexican prison last week and is considered one of the world’s most dangerous criminals. After his escape, Trump even engaged with a fake Guzman in a brief, albeit threatening exchange on Twitter.
Pitbull began his short speech by thanking Trump, the Republican presidential hopeful, for inviting him to eat in his hotel and fly in his helicopter.
“I had a different idea of this man,” Pitbull said of Trump whose incendiary comments about Mexican immigrants have enraged Latinos across the country. “I want to tell him, look, I’m not a politician, I’m a musician, but most of all I’m Latino.”
He then called on Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to “ponte las pilas” which loosely translated means “Step it up.”
“Because Donald Trump cannot be president!” he said.
Clinton addressed Trump’s comments earlier this week at the annual convention for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights group in the country.
“I don’t have to wait to become president to take a stand right here and right now against the divisive rhetoric that demonizes immigrants and their families,” Clinton told the crowd on Monday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, two of Clinton’s opponents, also dumped on Trump in their speeches to the thousands of Latinos assembled in Kansas City for the convention. Sanders called Trump’s comments an “outrage” and O’Malley slammed Trump as “a hate-spewing character running for president.”
Both Bush and Rubio have waded into the “Pitbull Primary” with Rubio saying he likes the Florida superstar’s music and Bush even saying he’d like to invite him to a baseball game.
Rubio has called Trump’s comments “offensive” “inaccurate” and “divisive” and Bush has said his comments were meant to “inflame and incite and to draw attention,”
Trump’s popularity however, continues to rise. A new Fox News poll released on Friday showed Trump ahead of 16 Republican candidates with 18 percent of likely Republican primary voters saying they would vote for him.