House Speaker Paul Ryan pleaded with President Trump in a phone call to tout the booming economy rather than continue attacking the migrant caravan in Mexico in the final days before Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to a report Monday.
The Wisconsin Republican reached out to Trump on Sunday and urged him to change his message, but the president said his focus on immigration is firing up his supporters, Politico reported.
“Trump has hijacked the election,” a senior House Republican aide told Politico about Trump’s attention to immigration. “This is not what we expected the final weeks of the election to focus on.”
In recent rallies, Trump has talked up job growth and the economy, but he continues to highlight the thousands of Central American migrants who are heading to the US border.
Trump has called the caravan an “invasion” and said “violent predators” and “unknown Middle Easterners” have infiltrated the group.
Burnishing his hard-line stand, he’s suggested changing the 14th Amendment to get rid of the guarantee of birthright citizenship, has mobilized more US troops at the border and has blasted Democrats for advocating open borders.
At a rally in Montana on Saturday, a day after the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the US economy added 250,000 jobs in October, Trump admitted that he can crow about job creation, but that doesn’t keep the crowd spellbound.
There’s “no reason to go on about it for 45 minutes” when there are problems to solve — like the “crisis” on the border, he said.
“I can only go for four or five minutes with that stuff, and then the crowd says ‘We love you,’ and then they start dwindling off,” Trump said at the rally.
The president last week on his Twitter page released an ad that showed Luis Bracamontes, a deported illegal Mexican immigrant who was convicted of killing two law enforcement officers in 2014, vowing to kill more cops if he gets out of prison.
The ad asks: “Who else would Democrats let in?”
Some Republicans said they believe Trump has ignored the House, where Democrats are expected to reclaim control, to concentrate on the Senate, where the GOP is hoping to keep their majority.
“His honing in on this message is going to cost us seats,” a senior House GOP campaign source told Politico. “The people we need to win in these swing districts that will determine the majority, it’s not the Trump base; it’s suburban women, or people who voted for [Hillary] Clinton or people who are not hard Trump voters.”
In a speech Sunday in Georgia, Trump admitted what he’s focusing on.
“I think we’re going to do well in the House,” he said about Tuesday. “But, as you know, my primary focus has been on the Senate, and I think we’re doing really well in the Senate.”