In 2012, Donald Trump said GOP is 'never going to win another election' without immigration reform

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last updated 8 November 2016

In December of 2012, New York real estate magnate Donald Trump called in to Fox & Friends to talk about immigration reform — and specifically, why he believed it to be key to future Republican victories.

Republicans are "going to have to get smart," he said, musing on Mitt Romney's then-recent loss. "They cannot have what happened to them with immigration and other issues sabotage their elections," Trump continued, adding, "immigration is very important, and the Republicans have to get involved. Otherwise, look, they're never going to win another election!"

Shortly before that call, in late November of 2012, Trump gave an interview to Newsmax in which he argued along similar lines. "Republicans didn't have anything going for them with respect to Latinos," he said of the 2012 race, charging that Democrats too lack a coherent policy but at least have the merit of being "kind" and not "mean-spirited" toward immigrants. In the same conversation, Trump said Romney's "crazy policy of self deportation" was "maniacal" and called on Republicans to handle immigration reform "with respect to people wanting to be wonderful productive citizens of this country."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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