propelled trump forward. to josh s point, if cultural issues like immigration are hot button issues, immigration takes us back to jobs and the jobs issue and the wage issue doesn t get resolved by cracking down on immigration. there are jobs available in this country, and americans don t want them because they don t pay enough. there are small businesses having to shut down because they cannot get foreign workers because they can t get the approva approvals. how does immigration remain a hot button issue for trump counties when it doesn t solve anything for them? well, that s a question that democratic politicians ask all the time. but remember, in 2016 i don t think it was actually, stephanie, the jobs issue that got trump the votes he needed in those crucial rust belt states that got him into the white house. it was if you look at analyses of the trump coalition, it was significantly issues connected
to race. the same ones that josh is talking about in the reporting that he s done about the economic consequences. hillary clinton carried counties that generate two-thirds of the economic activity in the united states. so if the economy is boosted by trump tax cuts which in the short-term it may be, that is likely to generate jobs disproportionately in the democratic areas, but when the president talks about the wall with mexico, about crime among immigrants when he goes after african american athletes, he is touching racially sensitive cords that appeal to many of those con college white voters who he depended onto get elected and they re not responding principally to economic incentive. they re responding to cultural ones as josh indicated. oftentimes the cross cultural ones come from a place of hopelessness and come from a place of joblessness, and there are jobs available. josh, i want to ask you before we go, obviously the united
afghanistan. i can t even get my local papers to pick it up. bob, why isn t this congress, why isn t this country focusing on the tragedy that s unfolding every day in afghanistan? i mean, this tom brokaw wrote a great piece in the new york times saying the wars america forgot. afghanistan and iraq. and there s just a disconnect, and there s an acceptance that we re going to be there, that there are going to be casualties. my former assistant, josh boke, had the lead story in the post yesterday where they had the story about all of the money that we spent on these projects, on these roads. we go in and we build the roads and then turn it over to the afghans and they don t have the money or the experience and so they are even worse potholes in afghanistan in all those roads than in washington, d.c. and, pat, we were talking