The 45th president wants to become the 47th president who has more minority votes than Mitt Romney and John McCain.
How do you do that? Because he did everything his way. Eli Lake has broken it all down for us. Eli, welcome back.
Thanks so much for having me. Are you in Milwaukee, Brian? Yes, I am still here, still in Milwaukee.
Your thoughts about how this has changed? Well, I would say, well, first of all, I mean, I was not in Milwaukee. I was in New York, kind of helping as a deputy editor and also reporting, writing for the Free Press, our convention team that was there. But I will say, having watched it, covered it, talking to a lot of Republicans, the overall vibe that I got not being in Milwaukee, but hearing it from everybody else was that this was a party that not only believed it was going to win, it was a party that was unified. It was in a positive mood. It was focused on the future. You did not have that Trump that was obsessed with what he believed was a stolen election in 2020. You had a party that was looking about trying to really, as the slogan says, make America great again, or as I saw in some of the banners, make America great once again.
So it's now Magoa. So I thought, so that's the first thing is that you had on the one hand and then the contrast, of course, because it's a binary choice in the American system is the Democrats, which is that party we are watching in real time, Brian, a once in like a one, two or three generation meltdown civil war. It is, I've never seen anything quite like it. It's the end of the Clinton, Obama era for the Democrats. You have a situation where the president is openly defying the power brokers of his own party.
And there is some kind of uprising and insurrection and you have, it's, they're disintegrating before our eyes. And if you had to predict, a year or two ago, what party would melt down in the 2024, you know, the summer of 2024 during the conventions, you think it would be the Republicans because you'd have, you know, their nominee, Trump, indicted or convicted of all these legal matters that he's going through. You, you know, if you would have asked that question in the beginning of 2023, you'd say, well, you know, Santa's looks like the strong guy to lead the party out of the Trump era. But instead, you have a unified Republican party.
And really, it's a joke. Sometimes we talk about Democrats and disarray. No, this is Democrats civil war at this point. And I don't know, even if they replace Biden with Kamala, or even if they replace Biden with, you know, Oprah, who knows, it is going to be very difficult to get the, to just sort of evolve to campaign mode because there's so much bitterness and animosity. And you like, yeah, I want to get to that, but I look, I want to go back if I can to your column, because I always think about this, because I remember the autopsy came out after Mitt Romney lost and John McCain struggled.
They go, you guys got to redo your party. They say you have, you are an aversion to nonwhite voters. You better learn to start to talk less harshly about immigration. There's got to be a way to get African American voters. And in comes Donald Trump, who, who made some statements like, you know what, we got to stop Mexico. You know, we have Mexico's not sending us their best. A lot of them are rapists. A lot of them are criminals, all these things that were radioactive to those people who study what should happen. And when it comes to blacks, what do you have to lose is there is Donald Trump's message.
And you think, oh my goodness, that's not the message you need. And in the end, he has more black votes. He's got roughly 26% of the vote, which was Mitt Romney got eight. And then you have the Hispanic votes. I think the president is winning the Hispanic vote right now.
We're close to, uh, to, to Joe Biden. So how did it happen? Well, I think it's just about Trump or did he show something that for everyone else to copy? I think you showed that there, that you cannot assume that Hispanics, Latinos who came into this country legally following the rules would have some sort of fidelity or solidarity with people who came into this country illegally. In fact, what I think we are learning is that the people who are the newest Americans who went through our system and became immigrants in America are most angry and most offended by people who skip the line, who come in and break the rules. So that's the first thing. So the idea that you appeal to legal immigrants, new Americans new Americans, by saying that your policy is to ignore people who violated the process that they had to go through is actually maybe a way of alienating those new Americans.
So that's number one. Number two, I think that there's something else going on, which is that it seems like such a kind of like, it's almost like there's a bigotry in the expectation that blacks will support a party that will, you know, that likes the welfare state. And Latinos like anyone who says nice things about the open borders.
And that's not true. It's a diverse community like anyone else, treat us like individuals. There are going to be a diversity of opinions within these communities. And I think that the fact that Trump is going after those votes and not just trying to be a kind of facsimile of what the Democrats are saying, or like we're like the Democrats, but a little less in that respect, I think by, you know, to use an old phrase from the 19, I think it's the 1980s, the 1970s, a choice, not an echo. I think that's Goldwater, actually, the 60s. So the idea that he presented a choice and not an echo, it resonated among these minority communities that the people who wrote the autopsy said that the Republicans had to reach out to. So he didn't come in saying, I'm going to have comprehensive immigration reform, we're going to give amnesty to the people who are here, which would have been the Romney move, or the McCain move, or the Jeb Bush move. Instead, he sort of says, No, I'm going to build a wall, and I'm going to keep the bad guys out. And we're going to we're going to do something about all the illegal immigration. And that really resonated not I mean, also with unions and lots of working class people who really do see it as competition for their jobs.
So in that respect, I think that Trump kind of figured something out right at the smartest guys in the room couldn't see. That is the sound of an expensive car repair about to happen. And to prevent breaking the bank with your out of warranty vehicle, you should call car shield. America's number one automotive protection company car shield has helped save drivers big dollars on car repairs.
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That's 800-2040-239. And also when you talk about electric cars, and when you and when you talk about trade, and when you talk about when he attacked free trade of imbalance trade, when you talk about electric cars, you hurt unions. And also he doesn't pander. He's actually showing up in Philadelphia, showed up in New York and he showed up in Detroit.
And he had such an impression, made such an impression that Pastor Lorenzo Sewell was on last night, African American from Detroit. Listen to what he said. Cut 14. President Donald Trump, he came during his birthday weekend. Let me ask you a question. Grand old party, what would you do for your birthday if you were worth $6.7 billion?
What would you do for your birthday? Would you come to Detroit? Would you come into the hood hood? He came to the hood because he cares about average, every day Americans. I mean, it was a pretty intimidating message.
He went into the African American vote. I mean, contrast that with Joe Biden being led off the stage by Barack Obama at a star-studded gala at Radio City Music Hall with Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and all of the Hollywood super elite. Contrast those two things. And that's all you in some ways need to know.
And I would add one more thing. In 2020, it was assumed that the radical position of prison abolition and police abolition was a way to connect with the black community. And what you saw in this convention was the mother of an Afghan combat vet who is African American directly call out Alvin Bragg who implemented those kinds of policies and said, you are letting the murderers of my son off the hook who survived the Taliban attacks in Afghanistan only to come back to New York City to be attacked by gang members, two of whom you had effectively commuted and dropped the sentences against.
And that is a remarkable message. Does it mean that he's going to connect with a majority of African Americans? Absolutely not. Does it mean he's going to maybe get more than 25%, 20%? That's really in play. And if that is the case, then I think that's the end of what was called this a coalition of the ascendant under Obama. That's the end of the Democratic coalition. If he if Republicans are competing for a quarter of the African American vote, it's a whole new ball game.
The map is totally different. All right, Eli, great column. Pick it up. Which one of the outlets did you write this for? It's called Trump did everything wrong.
So why did it work? Okay, so this is my full time gig. I'm now at the Free Press. That's Barry Weiss's growing, wonderful new outlet.
Everyone should subscribe. It's a really it's a great publication. We've got amazing writers there.
Douglas, Mary, you can read me. You can read Peter Savodnik. You can read Barry Weiss, who's terrific. We just got Neil Ferguson, who is one of the best historians in the world right now.
It's a hot pub, as they say. Sign up for Eli Lake. Eli, thanks so much. I appreciate what you do for the show all the time. Jason in the house, the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Dive deeper than the headlines in the party lines as I take on American life, politics and entertainment. Subscribe now on Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you download podcasts. Listen to the show and free on Fox News podcast plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
