'Americans Are Concerned': GOP Strategist Highlights Trump's Missteps In Handling Of Immigration

Forbes Breaking News

GOP strategist and Executive Director of Principles First Brittany Martinez joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss

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00:00Something else that President Trump won on is his messaging surrounding immigration.

00:05And Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said that in his first 100 days, the border is now secure.

00:11And CBP found that there were record low border crossings back in March.

00:16Although President Trump's deportation policies are largely controversial in this first 100 days,

00:21do you think immigration is a bright spot or rather brighter spot when you're looking at the economy and tariffs?

00:27But how would you grade President Trump on his immigration stance?

00:31I think immigration, maybe for the first time ever in a presidential,

00:35was ranked really high in what people were worried about right there next to the economy.

00:40And so I think Americans also wanted someone who is going to be strong on our border security

00:44and make sure that our America's generosity isn't taken advantage of.

00:48However, I don't think that the way some of these things have been handled has been very helpful to the president.

00:54So, you know, I don't think tariffs are great.

00:56I don't think what he's done with immigration is great,

00:57especially with some of those very out there cases that people are paying attention to.

01:02I think that Americans are concerned.

01:05And also, I think that some Americans aren't totally buying what's coming out of the White House.

01:10And they're saying, well, release all the documents and let us decide for ourselves.

01:13And we're getting sort of some redacted paperwork, I guess, for lack of a better term,

01:17or just certain pages of certain documents, right?

01:20And, you know, I think it's important to have strong border security.

01:24But I don't know that he's done it the best way either.

01:27And I think he needs to sort of sharpen the way that he's doing things.

01:32When we talk about Elon Musk, he was taking a sledgehammer to the government, right?

01:37And we said, you know, you need a scalpel approach.

01:39And so I think the president should take some of that into consideration

01:43and do a scalpel approach of how he's handling tariffs and immigration X, Y, Z,

01:48because he's kind of going full force immediately.

01:52And Americans are kind of a little concerned, I think.

01:57I want to now set our sights abroad.

02:00There are two wars that President Trump talked about on the campaign trail.

02:03And one of them, he said, I will end it in a day.

02:06And that was Russia, Ukraine.

02:07That war is still ongoing.

02:09The United States is in the midst of negotiations between the two.

02:12Some experts I've spoken to have said President Trump seems to be rushing this,

02:16seems to be appeasing President Putin just a little bit there.

02:20When it comes to the Middle East, there is still a war between Israel and Hamas.

02:24How would you grade President Trump's foreign policy?

02:26Talk to us about that.

02:29I don't think very great either.

02:30I mean, when we talk about ending these wars, one, as a proud American,

02:34I know that we like to consider ourselves a global superpower.

02:37However, ultimately, at the end of the day, if Putin or Hamas doesn't want to end the war,

02:43I don't know how much influence a U.S. president could have.

02:46And I don't think that's specific to Trump.

02:48I would have said the same thing about Biden.

02:50I think it's important for us to be able to come to the negotiating table and bring people together.

02:56However, I don't know when Republicans became Putin's sympathizers.

02:59When you think about the Cold War and Reagan and tear down that wall,

03:04I think that we've taken a very stark, different approach from back then.

03:10And we have to remember, I think we're doing a better job on this with Israel,

03:14is that Israel did not start this war.

03:16It was Hamas.

03:17Ukraine did not start this war.

03:19It was Putin.

03:19And we have to remember who our allies are and who our adversaries are.

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