Rep. Chip Roy of Texas unleashed a masterclass of denial while speaking with CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday night.
The act kicked off after Tapper confronted Roy with footage of First Lady Melania Trump hosting an ‘opulent’ White House dinner scene complete with expensive dinnerware as Americans struggle under an affordability crisis created by Trump’s own policies.
“Can you explain the worldview of the president and first lady when they — when she puts up that state dinner video?” asked Tapper. “It’s very fancy. But it’s giving kind of like Nancy Reagan, White House china vibes, and then President [Donald] Trump talking about how there is no affordability crisis.”
“I’m never going to try to explain what someone else is thinking about on any particular issue,” said Roy, immediately surrendering the argument.
“But what I can tell you is what the people of Texas are telling me and people across the country. … [P]eople are concerned, of course, about affordability, and the president’s right to raise it,” Roy added, without mentioning the voter outrage and a polling slump that followed Trump after he denied the existence of an affordability crisis a few months ago. “It takes a while [to fix]. We’ve been in this term for 18 months. It takes a while to reverse the mistakes, by the way, of both parties. Both parties have been failing on the spending front that’s driven inflation.”
Roy then pleaded for voters to give Republicans a chance to “finish the job” that Trump has peppered with spiking inflation and gas prices amid his unilateral war with Iran and tariff policies with U.S. trading partners.
Tapper then pointed out that voters appear to be turning on Trump’s immigration policies to the point where even once loyal GOP candidates are attacking Trump to side with constituents.
“[Trump] was elected the second time, but I think the issue was a lot of people expected they were going to go after the worst of the worst, the bad, the so-called bad hombres,” said Tapper. And yet we’ve seen people who are not the worst of the worst, not bad hombres being taken,” said Tapper, then citing the death of two Minneapolis residents at the hands of federal officers and a Florida GOP congresswoman demanding “dignity.”
“And now we have an issue that Republicans used to have the advantage on immigration. And voters are saying they prefer Democrats over Republicans on the issue,” said Tapper. “Do you understand why the pendulum swung that much?”
“Well, first of all, I’m not sure I accept that the pendulum has swung that much,” said Roy, in opposition to countless polls saying otherwise. “I think most of the people that I talked to, again, not just Republicans … and people are very happy that our streets are safer, that we’re not having as much fentanyl, that we don’t have as many, uh, cartel problems and gang problems in South Texas.”
Despite Roy’s claim, polls are stacking up against Trump and his party on almost all issues, including immigration—polls where Trump and the GOP once dominated.
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