U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is presiding over the San Diego suit, and Trump has said Curiel’s Mexican heritage means he can not ensure a fair trial for Trump, who wants to build a border wall to keep people from illegally entering the United States from Mexico.
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Perhaps it was because last week, Trump took pot shots at the judge handling the Trump University fraud case, saying he was biased because he of Mexican heritage. I think they are inappropriate regardless, she said. Why any modern-thinking person would ever believe that building a wall along the border of a neighboring country, which is both our ally and one of our largest trading partners, is frankly astounding and asinine. “I’m going to build a wall”.
House and Senate GOP leaders have condemned Trump’s remarks about Curiel, while donors have openly anxious that losing Latino voters could doom them in key down-ballot races.
“I don’t agree with what he had to say”, McConnell said.
Corker, another VP possibility, declared: “I don’t condone the comments”.
On NBC’s Meet The press, McConnell repeatedly refused to call Trump’s statement “racist”, stopping short of an argument by conservative commentator Erick Erickson proclaiming “the party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist”. Gonzales argued in a column in The Washington Post that Trump should be allowed to question a judge’s fairness, saying that questioning a judge is crucial to ensuring public trust in the courts.
For a party that in 2012 explicitly pinned its survival on drawing support from Hispanics, Trump’s words create an ugly series of headaches. McConnell has emphasized the Senate’s passage of bipartisan legislation, including bills to combat opioid abuse, reform education, and invest billions in highway construction.
The surrogates on the call included former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, former Massachusetts Sen.
“It’s possible, yes”, Trump said. Republicans are defending 24 seats in the Senate while holding a slim four-seat majority.
However, Trump was not done yet and as expected, the host of the show John Dickerson threw him a curveball asking if he would react in the same way if the judge was a Muslim.
“That man is an American, born in the US, a judge who has earned that position”, Rubio said.
Following the meeting with the pastors, Trump declared the gathering a success, telling reporters, “I saw love in that room”. “I hope to be able to support the nominee”.
Speaker Paul Ryan, who had just endorsed Trump in a lengthy op-ed from his hometown in Wisconsin, said Trump’s comments “came out of left field”.
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“Why doesn’t he just say, “Look, it’s up to the attorneys”… and leave it at that?”
