Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin joined SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss his state’s upcoming presidential primary and how disenfranchised Bernie Sanders supporters might sit out the November general election.
Duffy, whose district covers the central part of the state, said that among his constituents, traditional conservatives were siding with Senator Ted Cruz, but there was also a strong Trump following of working-class voters profoundly disillusioned with the Washington consensus on economic issues.
“People who care about trade, they care about lower taxes, they care about a strong defense – they have gravitated toward Cruz,” he said. “But we have a really large Trump movement in our district as well, where you have people who go, ‘You know what? Trade hasn’t worked for me. The economy might have helped other people over the last 15 years. It hasn’t helped me. My job hasn’t gotten better, my opportunity hasn’t gotten better. I believe that America should be able to secure her border. She should be able to determine who goes in, and who comes out of the country.’”
“They’re angry about ISIS. They’re patriots. They’re frustrated that America can’t address this rising threat in the Middle East,” he continued. “And Donald Trump’s straight talk speaks to them.”
Duffy thought it was interesting that despite the sense of a huge rift forming between Trump and Cruz voters, and the level of personal vitriol between the two candidates over the past few weeks, there really wasn’t that much separating their supporters on the most vital issues of the day, so the task of bringing the party together behind the eventual nominee might not be insurmountable, provided the candidate devotes himself to unifying the party.
To that end, he advised Trump and Cruz to begin thinking about how each would appeal to the other candidate’s supporters, after being “stuck in a rut” and appealing primarily to their own bases for much of the primary season.
“If we’re going to beat Hillary Clinton – and I think it’s going to be Hillary Clinton – we’re gonna need all hands on deck. We’re going to have to unify and rally and work together. And we’re going to have to bury the hatchet, and realize that whether it’s Ted Cruz, or Donald Trump, or somebody else, our Republican conservative candidate is going to be a hell of a lot better than Hillary Clinton – who has destroyed the Middle East, whose economic policies are, I think, worse than Barack Obama’s. We can’t tolerate another four years of another leftist liberal,” Duffy said.
Despite his prediction that Clinton would be the ultimate Democrat nominee, Duffy thought her opponent Bernie Sanders would win the Wisconsin primary.
“Wisconsin is a very liberal state, and a very conservative state,” he explained. “We’re the home of the progressive movement. We’re the home of the Republican Party. So I think Bernie wins here.”
“Listen, everyone talks about this ‘war’ in the Republican Party. You have a war in the Democrat Party. You have a lot of these liberals, these progressives, these socialists that don’t like Hillary Clinton. And if Bernie’s not the nominee, I think they’re gonna feel disenfranchised,” Duffy predicted. “The super-delegates are gonna play a role that, I think, most people in the Democrat Party are not gonna like, because it disenfranchises the voter, and I think many of them are going to pack their bags, go home, and stay home and not vote in November. And I think that’s a real news story that’s not being reported by the mainstream media.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.
You can listen to the full interview with Rep. Sean Duffy below:
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