Trump is a danger to democracy: Vargas Llosa

Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa expressed "categorically" that Donald Trump, who has championed a position against immigrants in the United States, will not be the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2016.

However, the Peruvian writer alerted that Trump should not be "looked upon as a mere clown, but someone who represents, albeit on a small scale, a danger for the whole democratic society".

During a lecture on "Democracy and freedom of expression" during the LXX Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in Charleston, Vargas Llosa said that despite "of everything that has been said" the United States remains as "a profoundly democratic country".

Therefore it is unfortunate that "someone who represents something so profoundly undemocratic, as is Donald Trump, could be a candidate in the United States".

Vargas Llosa added that in spite of Trump's racist speech "all the statistics can show that immigrants create wealth, create jobs, give much more than they receive".

However, "prejudices are deeper than rationality, than the statistical and economic arguments", he said.

In addition, Vargas Llosa expressed that "no society is vaccinated against racism and xenophobia, which touches a few irrational fundamentals that exist in all nations," which added to the presence of a "demagogue" such as Trump "can infect society" of an immigrant sentiment.

Questioned by Argentine journalist Andrés Oppenheimer, who served as interviewer, about the effect that the tycoon can have on the GOP, Vargas Llosa expressed that a lot of the Republicans "have understood this and feel the need to have the party focused on another topic if they want to win the election."