On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) said that people who are struggling to make ends meet while migrants shipped to their cities are getting benefits don’t care if President-Elect Donald Trump is mean “And the more we harp on that, I think the more we reinforce the idea that we don’t understand what they’re going through, because Trump is just trying to fix this broken system. I’ve been saying, too, for a long time, we need to be the party of reform.”
Ryan began by saying that there were “kind of political mistakes that I think that the administration made around immigration,” and people “want to talk to somebody who they feel like understands that anxiety, understands what they’re going through. And that’s the emotional connection that they have with Trump, as bizarre as it is. It is an emotional connection. Look at Harris’ numbers in New York City, look at the numbers in New Jersey, in some of these states that were affected by shipping the immigrants to those cities. It affected it. And then, so, — and the politeness stuff drives me crazy, because people don’t give a damn about that, at all. If there is a system that’s keeping you down, or you feel like it’s keeping you down and it’s got its boot on your throat, you don’t give a damn if the person who’s trying to get the boot off your neck is swearing or they’re mean-spirited or they’re an asshole. You don’t care, because they’re being a jerk on your behalf. And so, that’s why people don’t care. And the more we harp on that, I think the more we reinforce the idea that we don’t understand what they’re going through, because Trump is just trying to fix this broken system. I’ve been saying, too, for a long time, we need to be the party of reform.”
He continued, “Like if you’re shipping immigrants to my city and they’re getting money and checks and this and that and all these benefits and I’m out slogging every day, can barely make ends meet because I’m a union construction worker in a big city like New York or Boston, that pisses you off. And so, they don’t feel like we’re for them like they did so many, many years ago, when my grandfather was in a union. We’ve lost the room on that, and we’ve got to reboot this party, because we’ve lost the room and…the end result is what we saw, almost a clean sweep across the board.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
