Column: How an 'American Cholo' went from Hillary Clinton fan to Trump voter

Oct. 29, 2024 1:28 PM PT

In a North Hollywood podcast studio last week, Gill Tejada and his co-host, Boo Boo, trashed liberal shibboleths, like any good Trumpers.

Puberty blockers for teens. Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. Gavin Newsom. Homelessness. High taxes. Unchecked migration.

The topics weren’t surprising. The setting and language … were.

“My president got a felony, homeboy!” Tejada exclaimed at one point to hundreds of live viewers on YouTube and Instagram.

“He’s the big homie on the block, bro,” replied Boo Boo, who proudly deemed Trump a “junkyard dog” ready to fight for the United States. “He’s like, ‘I’ll smoke you.’”

Welcome to “American Cholo,” a podcast Tejada has hosted since 2018 that initially focused on stories about gang life and Chicano culture but has now turned full Trump bro.

With his San Fernando Valley Chicano accent, close-cropped hair and frequent use of words like “carnal,” “playboy” and “fool,” Tejada can come off to a first-time listener as a Pendleton-wearing buffoon in a Culture Clash skit.

But dismissing him so easily is a mistake he fully expects liberals to make, to their own detriment. Tejada, 49, embodies a trend that has thrilled Republicans and alarmed Democrats as election day comes closer: the drift of Latino men toward Trump.

Surveys throughout the summer consistently found a double-digit divide between Latina and Latino support for Kamala Harris. The gender gap exists across racial and ethnic groups to some degree, but media outlets have seized on Latino men with disbelief, largely predicated on this question:

How could they cheer on Trump, who has referred to Mexico as a place that sends “rapists and drug dealers” to the U.S.; deemed El Salvador a “shithole” country and Puerto Rico “dirty”; has repeatedly described Venezuelan migrants as criminals; and keeps promising to unleash the “largest deportation” ever if he’s elected?

Northwestern University history professor Geraldo Cadava, who has written extensively about Republican Latinos, says he’s “wary of explanations” about Latino male support for Trump “that are about machismo, misogyny and patriarchy — it might be in there, sure. But I’d also want the people making arguments about that to at least consider these more material matters, like the industries where Latino men are overrepresented, like construction and law enforcement. Their leaders are all in on Trump.”

The threat is real enough that the Harris campaign this month announced an Hombres con Harris (Men with Harris) initiative that quickly drew ridicule from both progressive and conservative commentators for being too much, too little and too late to convince guys like Tejada.

“Many Latinos are going to Trompito Land, fool,” he told a caller during the podcast taping I attended, using a diminutive — Little Trump — uttered by the former president’s Latino haters that Tejada has reappropriated as a loving moniker. His patter — fast, outraged, informed and tinged with well-timed jokes — was a master class in old-school talk radio.

A U.S. flag and a camera monitor showing a man

He went through the California propositions on this year’s ballot, focusing for a while on Proposition 6, which would ban forced labor in state prisons.

“Inflation’s gotten so bad that the jail guys want more money,” Tejada said, as Boo Boo laughed. “Is that what it’s come to, America?”

The two, once active in rival North Hollywood gangs, sat at a elegant desk built by Tejada’s brothers-in-law. Five cameras set up by Boo Boo captured their every reaction. Behind them was a screen with the “American Cholo” logo of a microphone backed by an American flag. Above the sound board was a framed canvas with the airbrushed names of dead members of Tejada’s former gang, North Hollywood Boyz. Before him was a plaque that read “Everyday I’m Hustlin’.”

“I don’t really like that fool Trump, but I’m going to vote for him,” Tejada eventually proclaimed. He stopped, looked directly at a camera and grinned. “That should be his campaign slogan.”

The “American Cholo” studio is five blocks away from where Tejada grew up. Among the mementos on the walls: the top of the pool table where he first recorded the podcast, a copy of the Constitution, a rusted sign that once hung on the fence of the long-closed Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino, where he did a stint.

Images of American flags lined the hallway. “We have them everywhere, because I’m grateful to this country,” he said. “I’ve lived in a Third World country. A lot of liberals haven’t.”

Tejada came to the U.S. from Honduras legally at age 6 to live with his mother, who was undocumented at the time. He dropped out of high school as a freshman and cycled in and out of juvenile halls.

“So the final time, I see an older guy sitting in his cell, and a light bulb went in my head,” Tejada said. He’s stocky, with light brown eyes and tattoos of his late brother and a 170 Freeway sign on his upper chest. “I’m looking around and asking myself, ‘Is that what I want to be?’ I was 24 years old. I was going to be on parole with no job. My daughter’s mom was going to prison. So I picked my family — best choice I ever made.”

Tejada learned how to lay cement — he’s now a foreman for a concrete company — and tried to get young people from his neighborhood into the trade.

He paid attention to politics but didn’t get involved, because he thought this country was mostly on the right track under Democratic leaders: “Bill Clinton was a good president. [George W.] Bush Junior was a complete moron. Obama did a good job.”

He voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he found Trump offensive: “I thought she would do a great job. She’s cutthroat.”

Then came the summer of 2020. Tejada was working on a project near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica when a rally against the murder of George Floyd devolved into a ransacking of small businesses.

“Law enforcement had a chance to stop them,” he said. “Instead, they stood down.”

The following day, he saw the damage up close. “And I thought to myself, ‘You can’t go to church and pray to your God, but you can have 10,000 people march and destroy s—? Are you kidding me?’”

He still wasn’t sold on Trump but couldn’t support Joe Biden — “The Democrats made a left turn, then a U-turn to super woke.” So he wrote in “American Cholo” as his choice for president.

The last four years have soured Tejada — who has never registered with a political party — on Democratic rule for good. He had thought Boo Boo was “crazy” for supporting Trump in 2016 — but now they are kindred spirits.

“If California was a prison yard, it’s run by the Democrats — and look at what’s going on,” said Boo Boo, who declined to reveal his real name, saying, “I’m good.”

“My mom can’t take the Metro,” Tejada replied. “My friend’s neighbor got robbed. [The L.A. City Council] is building more transitional housing in North Hollywood. Why aren’t they being built in Brentwood or Hancock Park?”

“My stocks under Trump, they shot up. Now, they’re in the dumps,” Boo Boo added.

“Latino men see the carne asada is $12 instead of $7.99,” Tejada said. “Democrats are having a problem selling that. But y’all are running the show right now, bro. They think we [Latinos] are too dumb to say anything. And if we say something, they say we’re too insensitive.”

Gill Tejada poses for a portrait before he records an episode of his 'American Cholo' podcast.

I asked the homies if Trump’s rising rhetoric against Latinos bothered them.

“It’s like having a nagging wife,” Boo Boo cracked. “In one ear and out the other. I hate to say this, but these [world leaders] will say, “We want a man to deal with.’ Under Biden, they haven’t been listening. They won’t with Kamala. Trump was that gangster on the block that ran the show.”

“He’s a douche!” Tejada exclaimed, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If I could interview him, I’d ask for an apology. But I’m not voting for him to be my compadre, or to marry into the family. I’m voting for him to run this country like a business and get us back into shape.”

Cal State Fullerton Chicano Studies professor Alexandro Jose Gradilla has listened to “American Cholo” and understands where Tejada and Boo Boo are coming from, even if he doesn’t agree with their politics.

He’s seen some of his former male students warm up to Trump. One, who works for a trucking company, said “their taxes were lower under Trump, and [it’s] hurting them to hire people.”

Gradilla said these men are “not monsters” but are symptomatic of how “every cultural and ethnic group is struggling with, how do we incorporate men into civic engagement?”

Too many Latino males, the professor said, are “embracing a hyper-individualized sense” of machismo.

“Someone has hit Control-Alt-Delete on memory, and people say, ‘Sure, grandma was undocumented, but we’re now good people,’” he said. “‘These immigrants are different, they should be deported.’ They’re making a strange invisible inoculation for themselves of, ‘It’s not going to be me who suffers. It’s going to be someone else who deserves it.’”

Tejada scoffs at the suggestion that he considers himself above other Latinos. He has organized backpack giveaways and coached Little League. “American Cholo” continues to feature Chicano musicians and artists, even as Tejada has interviewed local political candidates such as Nathan Hochman, who is running for L.A. County district attorney on a law-and-order platform.

Earlier this year, Tejada even served on the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council — “until I figured out they would sit there and discuss purchasing a microwave for an hour instead of dealing with real city issues.” He resigned after six weeks.

“People tell me that I forgot where I came from because of my conservative thoughts,” he said, beaming. “But I never left.”