Real estate magnate and conservative provocateur Donald Trump told Breitbart News Thursday that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s defeat in a primary by conservative Dave Brat shows the entire political class in Washington is in danger.
“Everybody is vulnerable because what’s happening in the country is very sad and the world is watching,” Trump said, emphasizing again: “Everybody is now vulnerable.”
Trump said he thinks Cantor’s “amazing” can be traced to his stance on immigration policy and because Cantor “lost touch with his people that he’s representing.”
“His whole stance on immigration and his softness on immigration caused him to lose one of the most embarrassing elections ever,” Trump said.
Overall, Trump warns the rest of the Republican Party, to avoid a fate like Cantor’s, don’t support amnesty or a massive increase in legal immigration.
“This is a great signal because it tells them people want to get our house in order,” Trump said. “If you look at what’s happening in Texas right now, or other places, people are just flowing into this country just like it’s an open door policy. We’re supposed to provide healthcare and we’re supposed to provide education–we’re supposed to provide everything.”
Trump said Republicans should be more focused on helping Americans succeed than on helping illegal aliens or future foreign immigrants.
“We take care of everybody else before we take care of our own people,” he said. “The Tea Party figured that out a long time ago and I think this is a tremendous victory for the Tea Party. The fact that Eric Cantor lost was a tremendous victory for the Tea Party. People can try to say whatever they want, but it’s awful hard for them to get away with it now. It’s a massive victory. It’s never happened before. Something like this has never taken place in this history of this country.”
Other countries, Trump said, protect their own citizens first.
“It’s very simple: I just got back from the Middle East,” he said. “I’ve seen airports and I’ve seen things happening on their inner roadways and highways and bridges and you look at what’s going on and being built in China and many other places. Our country, our whole county is rotting, like a third world country. I think the greatest signal that was sent on the tremendous Eric Cantor defeat is that people want to get their own house in order. We’re tired of these open door policies that are just destroying our country.”
Republicans need to fight President Obama and the Democrats much more vigorously, Trump added.
“The Republicans are not fighting hard enough,” he said. “Republican Representatives are not fighting the way they said they would. Whether immigration, Obamacare or any of the other disasters happening in this country right now, the Republicans are not fighting the way they should be fighting. I think that the Cantor loss brings that to the fore–I think that brings that out more than anything else I’ve seen in a long time.”
Trump said this type of anti-establishment electorate mindset has translated into presidential politics as well–and will continue to do so–and is not an isolated incident, as many establishment politicos have tried to argue. Trump points to Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss to President Obama as a prime example, noting that if the millions of conservative voters who stayed home actually voted, Romney would have won.
“Look at Mitt Romney’s loss: You’ve got tons of conservatives who didn’t vote,” Trump said. “They just didn’t feel that they had the incentive to go out and vote. Had they voted, he would have won. I think a lot of people are vulnerable, it’s something very special happening and it’s an amazing victory for the Tea Party.”
In 2016, Trump said, the GOP nominee needs to be a grassroots conservative.
“I think the only person that’s going to win and beat the Democrats, most likely Hillary, is going to be a conservative,” he said. “It needs to be somebody who wants to make America great again. If they don’t have that feel and that attitude they’re not going to win the election. If they say immigration takes place because of an ‘act of love,’ as Mr. [Jeb] Bush said, you’re not going to win. You’re not going to win anything. Number one, you’re not going to win the primary. And number two, you’re not going to win the general election.”