polls, i need to say this kind of stuff and not focus on the economy. i think he s partially right. if the economy, at least in part, a win for him it s a huge win for him. a 50 year low in unemployment. he should be talking more about it. he should be talking about it all the time. but i think the caveat to that is this economy is pretty similar to what it s been for last several years and obama s economy. if you look at charts on the drop of the unemployment rate, they re very similar for the last ten years, since the end of the great recession. so people are not going gangbusters. there s a risk in talking about something that we ve had for a while. but he would be better served, if you talk more about the economy, less about this crazy immigration stuff. remember, that bifurcated economy led to the rise of the trump voter. many, many people do not own stocks. even if they ve seen slight wage
symone. i think ultimate lit democratic state is very excited. when i ve talked to democrats on the hill, they are more calmed down than a week ago when the var can was all over the place because they think trump has overshot with all this immigration stuff but i m still alarmed. can i ask you a question. i want clarification. i know you agree with the president on immigration reform and think he s being consistent. do you have any issues with how he s presenting this issue, not the policy points with which you agree but the ad and the language he s using? does that concern you at all? it really doesn t. i think that s vintage president trump, and in that regard i it doesn t trouble me in any sense what the message is. i think the message i think quite frankly i think his words are being parsed. he s never said everybody is a criminal that s coming through. the he said he said many people. if i could finish. he says he doesn t know how
i don t like it. i don t think it will, not in house seats. maybe in a senate seat or two. i don t know. i don t know how much political calculus he s put into this. i think he thinks maybe there is. my point is i don t like it. i don t think it s effective. it s not good for our country. there are a lot of my colleagues, i m a republican, very thoughtful, hard-working republican members of congress who actually voted on a compromise bill to solve a lot of the vexing immigration challenges that we have. we have a tax bill that stimulated the economy. we put more money into veterans care. nih funding, battling the opiate epidemic. we should talk about those issues and be reminding voters of the positive things we have done, not doing this, you know, doom and gloom immigration stuff. i just don t think that it s smart politically, and i don t feel that it reflects the positive values and contributions that a lot of my colleagues and i have made over the past two years. and of course,
yeah, that was what jim squires had said. he said perot was kind of running toward the middle of the electorate, but he showed some populist forces out there that in different hands, it could play out very differently. you look back at that and think ahead a generation. also buchanan, who first proposed the idea of building a wall but called it a fence. he exposed this undercurrent in the country, this desire to vote on the united states, to vote on nativism, to vote on immigration, stuff that donald trump in 2000 when he was flirting with a reform party candidacy condemned. not necessarily the immigration stuff, but the way ross perot was going about it. he called him a racist. then donald trump ended up co-opting whole cloth when he decided to run in 2016. you see in this book, it s one of my favorite parts of writing it. you see donald trump run for president essentially against the donald trump platform that we know today. it s amazing. pat buchanan wanted the border wall.
when it effects our pocketbooks. that s the wild card. i mean, that s a real concern because that could completely many practice. all of the gains. when our pocketbooks are effected. the support the president has gotten on the tariffs has come largely from liberals that feel he has the right to talk about all of this. not the republicans which is kind of wild. you know why i think? they are trying tote get him to do something destructive. you know that bernie sanders is tough on trades. they are trying to good eat him to do stuff. what about the immigration stuff. at least get these types of folks. they are very angry. i believe midterms are decided