Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called on Donald Trump to stop making divisive comments and instead begin talking about issues “people care about.”
McConnell, R-Ky., said he believes the election is “imminently winnable,” but only if Trump quickly changes course now.
“My advice to our nominee would be to start talking about the issues that the American people care about and to start doing it now,” McConnell said. “In addition to that, it’s time to quit attacking the various people you competed with or the various minority groups in the country and get on message.”
McConnell said he feared Trump is going to hurt GOP efforts to win the Latino vote thanks to Trump’s attack on an American judge of Mexican descent who will rule in the Trump University lawsuit.
“What I said was I was worried we would do to the Latino vote what was done to the African-American vote by defining our party in such a way that we could not reach out to what has become the nation’s largest minority group,” McConnell said, referring to the 1964 presidential election and the candidacy of Republican Barry Goldwater who opposed the Civil Rights Act. “So I am worried about that.”
McConnell said Trump has time to turn his campaign around and shift the focus to issues like reforming healthcare and improving the economy.
“He has an opportunity to do that,” McConnell said. “This election is imminently winnable. The American people at their core do not want four more years like the last eight. And so I hope that is what he’ll do. We are all anxious to hear what he may say next.”
