While stressing the need to first guarantee border security — thinks that the White House may be prepared to go far bigger than most people think as Trump seeks to fulfill his core campaign promise.
“I believe he’s willing to go even further and do something reasonable with people who have been here a long time unlawfully, but are not criminals,” Rubio told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Rubio, more than most lawmakers, understands the treacherous journey that Trump would face — since his own presidential prospects were eviscerated by his past willingness to compromise on the issue.
Trump has repeatedly balked on the threshold of swapping DACA protection for money to build his wall, in apparent concern about how his base would respond, even when Democrats were willing to spend $25 billion on border security that he could have spun as funding for the wall.
It’s long been a mystery why Trump, who enjoys a bond with his political base unlike any other recent President has been unwilling to test the limits of that loyalty. After all, though media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Mark Levin enjoy huge audiences, no one has ever electrified the populist, nationalist conservative movement like Trump.
And if any Republican President has the political credibility to lead the base to an immigration compromise, it would be Trump.
But the President has rarely made any attempt to reach out to voters beyond his own coalition — apparently believing he can repeat his narrow path to 270 electoral votes that defied all the pundits again in 2020.
CNN
