On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) said Democrats should go to the Republican Party’s base and tell them their party’s leaders think they’re anti-immigrant and “The Republican Party is better than this. And we need to bring them back into the fold of the American community.”
Host Joy Reid asked, “Why don’t Democrats just go to their [the GOP’s] base and say, you know what, your party leaders think that you’re so anti-immigrant and that you’re so afraid of brown people that that’s all it takes to get you to vote?”
Gomez responded, “That’s what we should do. One of the things that I’ve always believed is that this president is making this country small. This is actually a great country when we live up to our values. When he attacks immigrants, he’s attacking our values. He’s attacking our history. We’ve got to push back on that and tell the Republican base that immigrants do make this country better. How is it, like myself, in one generation, I can go from the son of immigrants, farm workers who lived in a one-room adobe house, to a member of Congress? You know, my sister, who’s — I’m very proud of my sister. This is actually a personal issue for me. She actually, because of the fear that Donald Trump has put out there, for the first time in her life, she’ll be becoming a US citizen on Tuesday. Because her son was afraid if she went to go visit her 95-year-old grandfather for his birthday, she wouldn’t be able to get back in.”
He continued, “We are better than this. The Republican Party is better than this. And we need to bring them back into the fold of the American community. Because it’s not about Democrats. It’s not about Republicans. It’s about one America, and we need to bring them back into the fold. Because that’s what’s going to make us better. And this is what their leaders think of them, that they can play them off with lies and misperceptions.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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