The News
Thursday 18 of April 2024

Nobel Laureate Vargas Llosa Calls Trump a "Clown and a Racist"


Mario Vargas Llosa sits behind his books during the presentation of his latest novel,
Mario Vargas Llosa sits behind his books during the presentation of his latest novel, "Five Corners", in Madrid
Nobel Prize laureate sees a certain victory for Democrats if Trump is their rival candidate

MADRID – Peruvian Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa said on Tuesday that Donald Trump was a “clown” and a “racist” who would doom the Republican party to defeat if it chose him as its candidate for November’s U.S. presidential election.

Mario Vargas Llosa, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, criticized Trump during the presentation of his latest novel. Photo: Reuters/Andrea Comas
Mario Vargas Llosa, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, criticized Trump during the presentation of his latest novel. Photo: Reuters/Andrea Comas

“He is a danger to the United States,” said Vargas Llosa, who himself ran as a centre-right candidate for the Peruvian presidency in 1990.

“It is a country that is too important for the rest of the world to have in the White House a clown, a demagogue and a racist like Mr Trump,” he told a news conference in Madrid to launch his new novel, “Cinco esquinas” (“Five Corners”).

Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican primaries, has said he wants to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and deport 11 million illegal immigrants. He also suggested, at his campaign launch last June, that Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug dealers.

Vargas Llosa said Trump’s “seemingly unstoppable” campaign would guarantee another term for the Democratic party.

Vargas Llosa, 79, won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2010 and now lives mainly in Madrid. He is known for books such as “The Time of the Hero” that explore Latin America’s structures of political power.

“Hillary Clinton surely will win a massive victory if the Republican candidate is Donald Trump.”

-Mario Vargas Llosa. Nobel prize winner.