FMR Romney Adviser Dan Senor Says Trump Does Not Have ‘Real Presidential Campaign’

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:06 pm

Dan Senor, who served as senior adviser to the Romney-Ryan campaign, told CBS This Morning on Monday that Donald Trump does not have a “real presidential campaign.”

Asked by co-host Norah O’Donnell about Trump’s major immigration speech on Wednesday, Senor was skeptical about its effectiveness, saying “they’re trying to reach white educated suburban middle class” and “upper middle class” voters in the suburbs. Not exactly a demographic that will help Trump with the Hispanic vote.

Watch courtesy of CBS News:

NORAH O’DONNELL (CO-HOST): And Donald Trump saying he is going to finally give this major speech [on immigration] on Wednesday.
 
DAN SENOR: Right.
 
O’DONNELL: Supposedly clarifying this, but isn’t this muddling of the issue just bringing more attention what is a divisive issue for someone who’s trying to gain Hispanic voters?
 
DAN SENOR: Absolutely. Look, I don’t think they believe they’re actually going to reach significant numbers of Latino voters. I think they’re trying to reach white educated suburban middle class, upper middle class in the suburbs and exurbs where they’re suffering and Republicans can’t win without those voters. So they’re trying to calm those voters down to say, “Look, we’re not as crazy and xenophobic as the media or our opponents say we are.” But it also — just this uncertainty about his position. You guys just showed earlier on the show clips of his surrogates on TV all over the weekend. No two of them said the same thing about his immigration plan. It just speaks to the strains of not having a real presidential campaign. When you have a real presidential campaign, you have surrogates, you roll out policy, you coordinate. There’s none of that going on and it’s chaos.

Chaos indeed, as he hires white supremacist Steve Bannon as his campaign CEO right before telling black voters he wants to be their champion, leaving even experts uncertain as to what he is actually saying from one minute to the next.

Immigration will obviously be a major topic at any debate with Hillary Clinton. Yet not only does Donald Trump not have a cohesive immigration policy, but he is declining to have mock debates. Perhaps he intends to rely, as he did in the GOP debates, on bluster and bullying, but that will not work with Hillary Clinton, who does have a real presidential campaign. Donald Trump has major problems, and he is not doing anything about those problems even as he prepares to go into the toughest fight of his very short political career.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson


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