Donald Trump Praises Jose Fernandez at Florida Rally

by | Sep 27, 2016

Following his death Sunday morning, you’d be hard pressed to not find someone somewhere praising Jose Fernandez.

And I get it. The Miami Marlins ace was a stud pitcher on his way to what could have been one heck of a career.

One place you’d not expect to hear his name mentioned is a Donald Trump rally. But during the wannabe president’s latest stop Tuesday in Melbourne, Florida…there it was.

The onetime baseball player (it’s true…Trump was once scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies) even went so far as to call Fernandez “just about as good a pitcher as there ever was.”

Since the 24-year-old’s career was, basically, just starting, you can’t really argue that, but plenty hit the Twittersphere to express their outrage that The Donald would use the pitcher’s name to garner support. Others debated whether or not Trump would or wouldn’t have targeted Fernandez (who, in 2008, defected from Cuba on a raft) as a potential deportee.

Hold your horses, internet.

If I’ve been playing the home game correctly, a President Trump likely wouldn’t have deported Fernandez. His targets are still Mexicans, Syrians and ISIS, right? Nowhere has he said anything about Cubans refugees.

Or has he?

“I don’t think it would be fair,” Trump said about Cuban refugees during a Miami campaign stop in February. “You know, we have a system now for bringing people into the country, and what we should be doing is we should be bringing people who are terrific people who have terrific records of achievement, accomplishment. You have people that have been in the system for years (waiting to immigrate to America), and it’s very unfair when people who just walk across the border, and you have other people that do it legally.”

So, yeah, as terrific as Jose Fernandez was on the mound, deep down, Trump would have preferred he stay in Cuba.