The former DC Republican Party chairman Ron Phillips has told Britain’s Sky News that U.S. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is “almost Churchillian”, claiming that not everyone in the establishment wing of the party is anti-Trump. He said: “I think there’s many of us who want to embrace Trump”.
Speaking to Sky’s Jeremy Thompson, Mr. Phillips said: “You know, Donald Trump is a first time candidate running for office and one of the things you’re seeing that’s a great occurrence in American politics in 2016 is that Americans are turning more towards the non-politicians. Somebody who isn’t a professional speaker or a professional politician such as a governor or a U.S. senator. So there’s a large vast reservoir of goodwill towards any candidate who’s out for the first time trying to make a difference.
He went on: “I’ve said it many times before – Donald Trump’s more than a candidate, he’s an actual movement. So there is going to be the ability for him to make a mis-step and be forgiven, and we’ve seen that time and time again.”
Smashing apart the narrative being peddled on UK news stations, Mr. Phillips said of Mr. Trump’s comments on abortion: “[W]ho did Donald Trump upset? Donald Trump upset women who support abortion rights, which he was already opposed to. So his statements today, although I think he is re-couching them and trying to clarify them, he didn’t make a statement to upset a new group who once supported him and will now not support him. He made another bold statement to a group that’s already opposed to him. So it’s just another case where, I know the media wants to say: ‘This is it! He’s almost done!’”
Mr. Phillips called the Trump movement the “new American French revolution”, stating “there is a tremendous grassroots movement across the country that cannot be accurately polled, it cannot be accurately gauged. There are people who are not honestly telling people how they are voting. There’s just an unseemly sense of anger that is in the political electorate today. And you’re having an extraordinary moment in American politics where it’s just literally a grassroots uprising. From the standpoint of those of us who actually are in Washington DC, we do want change, we do want a better government, but this is very unconventional in how it’s happening.”
Mr Thompson, the interviewer, insisted that the establishment Republican Party doesn’t want Mr. Trump as the candidate, a view held by most, but one which Mr. Phillips was keen to stress does not apply absolutely to all members of the political establishment.
“I disagree,” he said.
“I think there’s many of us who want to embrace Trump. I think he’s bringing a new level of excitement to the Republican Party. He has a tremendous cross-over appeal to non-traditional voters as well as Democrat voters like no-one else we’ve seen in the last 20 years.
“I want to be able to say, that would be of interest to your [British] viewers, it’s almost Churchillian, on how he’s basically able to go into both political parties and pull people together towards him.
“Again, Trump is more about a movement, a change than he is about an individual candidate.”
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