Never â ever â count President Trump out.
After begging voters to “pretend” he was on the ballot, Trump got socked with a monster rebuke, one of the worst midterm drubbings ever. But the same man who sprang up shouting “fight!” after surviving an assassins bullet, and who came back from political Siberia to win the popular vote in 2024, will not go quietly into the night.
President Trump wants to be one of the greatest presidents of all time, not just to his MAGA base, but to all Americans. How could he do that? By finally fixing our broken immigration system.
LIZ PEEK: THERE MAY BE A SILVER LINING IN TRUMP’S BRUTAL MIDTERM DEFEAT
To be considered great, a president must leave the U.S. permanently changed for the better. FDR created our nations safety net to counteract economic downturns, for instance, while Ronald Reagan ended the decades-long Cold War by driving the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Coming up with a balanced approach to immigration, an issue that has bedeviled our country for the past century or longer, is in the same league.
President Trump admitted on “60 Minutes” the other night that his immigration program had gone too far. In particular, he said that while he thought his administration got “high marks” for “getting the bad ones out”, he got hurt “because we also took people that had good jobs, that â that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.”
The president is correct. Early in his second term, over half the country signaled their approval of Trumps successful closure of our wide-open southern border and the deportation of gang members and other illegal criminals. But, as aggressive ICE raids into immigrant communities brought fear and ultimately, violence, attitudes shifted. By the time voters handed Democrats a landslide win last week, Real Clear Polling averages showed Trumps approval on immigration underwater by more than 10 points.
As Ive written repeatedly, the vast majority of Americans â Republicans and Democrats â support legal immigration. Most citizens came from somewhere else and applaud those who follow. That said, Americans were appalled to watch thousands of migrants cross the southern border illegally every day while Joe Biden was president; allowing millions to enter the country unvetted, unvaccinated and undocumented was criminal. Trumps promise to secure the border was a major reason he was elected in 2024, but he took that win as a mandate to eject everyone who was in the U.S. illegally. That was not only impractical, it was a profound misreading of the countrys attitudes towards immigration.
In January of this year, I argued on Fox News that the White Houses overreach on immigration might cost Republicans the House in the midterms, and here we are. Some think that in choosing Stephen Miller, reportedly the author of Trumps aggressive deportation program, as his chief of staff, the president is indicating that the harsh approach will continue. That could be wrong.
HOUSE GOP ERUPTS AT STEPHEN MILLER AS TRUMP ELEVATES HIM AFTER MIDTERM MASSACRE: ‘MEGALOMANIAC’<
