Brooks: Trump’s Base Loves Megyn Kelly, His ‘Sad’ ‘Legacy’ Is GOP ‘Contest’ Over Who’s ‘Most Anti-Immigrant’

New York Times columnist David Brooks joked that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “base of support is 67-year-old white male Republicans. Those guys love Megyn Kelly. So, he shouldn’t have gone after her” and that his legacy is the primary is “now a contest to see who can be the most anti-immigrant” on Friday’s “PBS NewsHour.”

Brooks said, “I thought last night hurt both Trump and Cruz. Trump because he looks petulant, he looks spoiled. He shouldn’t have gone after Megyn Kelly. His base of support is 67-year-old white male Republicans. Those guys love Megyn Kelly. So, he shouldn’t have gone after her. But — and then Cruz, as E.J. said, just got hit, hit badly, and then, as we saw in Lisa’s clip, whined about it, and really got one-upped by Chris Wallace in some of those exchanges. And so he — his personality was beginning to show.”

Later, while commenting on the immigration exchange between GOP presidential candidates Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz on immigration, Brooks stated, “[T]hey both flip-flopped, as Bush sort of did. I guess Rubio’s flip has a bigger flop. He really was the leader of the Gang of Eight. What Cruz was doing, sort of in the crucial week, he was sort of trying to figure out where to position himself. And he was leaning in favor, or at least some amendments that would be in favor, and then he decided to side out against, where Rubio really was a champion. What’s sad is that, it’s now a contest to see who can be the most anti-immigrant. And I think that’s the legacy of Trump, and that the idea that you could be for some compromise that would close the border and then have a path to citizenship, even though popular among Republicans nationwide, is not popular among Iowa caucusgoers. So they’re competing to show how anti-immigrant they are, and they’re competing to show that they would never make a compromise with a Democrat. And so they’re really appealing to the hardest of the hardcore right now.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett