Columnist and author of “‘A Disgrace to the Profession,'” Mark Steyn argued that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump “has as good a shot as anybody else at actually winning the general election” and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won’t win her party’s nomination on Tuesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
Steyn said, “I think the polls are expressing, as much as anything, a dissatisfaction with the Republican establishment. We keep being told that Trump has a ceiling on his support. And I confess, you know, in the first few weeks of his candidacy, I thought that was true, too. But it’s not just that 25% of people support him as their first choice, it’s that 10%, another 10% would back him as their second choice. So, he’s got potentially, 35% support in the Republican primary. I thought one of the most interesting numbers in that poll was one showing that up against Hillary, she would be 47%, he would be 42%. Now, a few weeks ago, it was Hillary 51%, Trump 34%. So, all his unfavorables are coming, and I think, instead of just scoffing at him and saying, oh, the McCain crack is going to kill him, the Republican establishment needs to consider the fact this guy is a serious leading candidate. He could well win the nomination, and he has as good a shot as anybody else at actually winning the general election, too.”
Steyn added that he would advise Trump to “continue being Trump,” and that he is “performing a useful service to the republic.” Steyn continued, “all the stuff that’s supposed to kill him, the cracks about John McCain, is all peripheral to the serious issues that he’s talking about. I mean, basically, his immigration paper, ought to be the sort of thing that one of these sort of — so-called mainstream so-called viable candidates ought to have put out, but they didn’t put it out. And because they didn’t put it out, he’s taken up a real issue that’s made them all look evasive. … Trump’s immigration paper is a serious paper. It seriously gets to the lack of social mobility, and the lack of economic opportunity in contemporary America. And very few other candidates are discussing that seriously.”
He also stated, “Yeah, well, you’ve got a choice, because for the other candidates, you can be on the…McConnell and Jeb Bush side of things, or you can be on the insurgent Trumpian side of things. The fact is, it’s not just Ted Cruz who was lied to by these guys. The old saying is, what is it, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Well, the Republican establishment fooled its voters once in 2010. It fooled its voters twice in 2014. And I don’t think they’re in a mood to be fooled again thrice. It’s a two-party system, which is unusual in the modern Western world. And one of those parties is ineffective, has been ineffective for the entire 21st century, at providing a coherent opposition to the other party. And Trump is saying, we’re tired of being told reasons why you can’t do things. His immigration plan, people keep coming up with this thing, Sean oh, no, it would require constitutional amendments, it’s pie in the sky, it can’t be done, nothing can be done, nothing ever can be done. It doesn’t require a constitutional amendments to end birthright citizenship. Deena Gilbey’s husband, a British subject, died on 9/11 rescuing Americans from the World Trade Center. He escaped, but he went back in to try to rescue his colleagues. A week later, the immigration service of the United States, the heartless thugs, sent Deena Gilbey a letter saying she and her kids were out of there. So, they have no difficulty deporting birthright citizens when they’re British subjects of guys who died in the World Trade Center. The idea that it requires a constitutional amendment is complete [hogwash] from beginning to end. And people are tired of being told why nothing can be done, Sean.”
Steyn also addressed that mass deportations are impossible, arguing, “Well, again, to go back to 9/11, a couple of days after that, the INS started cracking down on various Pakistanis in the New York area, who they thought had connections to terrorism. One result of that, was that thousands of Pakistanis drove straight up I-87, to the Quebec border, and there was a big line of Pakistanis to try and get into Canada. Because, in effect, the INS had tried to get hold of a couple of dozen, and everybody else had stampeded out of there. The United States government devotes vast resources to cracking down on Americans’ ability to maneuver around the world. It’s increasingly difficult for an American to open up a bank account in Paris, or Hong Kong, or Montreal, or anywhere. Yet, at the same time, as they say, that they can crack down on American citizens operating outside the country, they say it would be completely impossible to crack down on non-Americans operating within the country.”
Steyn also discussed Hillary Clinton, stating, “I don’t think she’ll be the candidate either, Sean. I think that is the way to bet. And, again, I think the great service Trump has done, is to blast us free of the sort of pap of looking at political spheres. The idea that somehow Trump is a non-serious candidate, but the serious, substantial candidate is Hillary Clinton, who as chief foreign affairs official of the United States, kept the confidential business of the United States on a server in some guy’s apartment, in his bathroom in the apartment. And if that’s what serious people do, the sooner they hand this country over to the buffoons, the better. And that’s why Trump is surging. You can’t have a two-party state where one party is a liberal party, and the other party is basically the Chamber of Commerce’s poodle.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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