The wheels are starting to fall off the Trump movement, MS NOW's Jen Psaki argued on "The Briefing" Thursday evening — and a key sign of it is that Republicans in previously safe districts are starting to break away from him.
Nowhere is this more apparent, she said, than the bizarre ad just released by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), who represents a district in the Miami area.
"Exactly two weeks ago, a journalist in Washington, D.C. captured this scene," said Psaki, showing an image of Salazar standing in front of the White House, speaking to the camera. No one knew what she was filming at the time, "but given the fact that Trump won the district, Salazar won back in 2024 by a whopping 14 points, my best guess would have been that she was cutting a pro-Trump ad, right? Not exactly."
She rolled the clip.
"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," Salazar said in the ad. "In July, 50 percent of the 5,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who help you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed too. Today you can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery, and Reagan was for communism. I'm not talking about giving them amnesty. I'm talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land. And only you can do that."
"Okay, first of all, let's just get this out of the way," said Psaki. "The Lincoln/Reagan analogy makes absolutely no sense. Is Trump supposed to abolish immigration like Lincoln did slavery? Is he trying to defeat immigration like Reagan did communism? Somebody on her ad team thought that was all a good idea. I'm not sure she thought that one through."
Regardless of what she actually meant, said Psaki, "she's a Republican member of Congress ... represents a district that voted for Trump in 2024 by a sizable margin in a pro-Trump state. Using a campaign ad to chastise the president on one of his signature issues."
This kind of rebuke, Psaki noted, "is definitely not a one-off."
For one thing, she said, this is happening in other states too. "Take, for instance, what's happening in the state of Iowa right now. Iowa Congressman Zach Nunn and Congresswoman Miller-Meeks are both Republicans who represent districts Trump won in the last election. But yesterday, both of those Iowa Republicans surprised everybody by joining with Democrats to vote in favor of a resolution curbing Donald Trump's war powers."
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