GOP stumbles

Trump: ‘I’m not going to blame anybody’ if GOP stumbles in midterms

By REBECCA MORIN

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he wouldn’t assign blame if Republicans lost the House in the midterm elections, adding that he believed that his stance on immigration would get women voters to come out for the GOP.

“I’m not going to blame anybody,” the president said to reporters on the South Lawn before departing for a campaign rally in Florida. “I think we’re doing well with the House, we have to see.”

Trump’s comments came after he demanded on Twitter earlier in the day that House Speaker Paul Ryan focus on keeping the majority, rather than speaking out against the president’s suggestion that he wants to end birthright citizenship.

Democrats are expected to do well in next week’s midterms, with several projections indicating they will take control of the GOP-held House.

The president, however, said that he had campaigned for “a lot of candidates that were down a little bit, now they’re up,” and warned that “we’ll see” what the outcome of the election will bring.

“I think we’re going to do well in the House,” he said. “I think we’re doing really, extraordinarily well in the Senate.”

Suburban women are expected to vote for Democrats to distance themselves from the president. College-educated white women in key battleground states are also backing the Democratic candidate in their districts by a margin of 62 percent to 35 percent, according to a Washington Post-Schar School survey released earlier this month.

Trump, however, said on Wednesday that he believed his views on immigration would garner support from women across the country, including suburban women.

“I don’t view suburban districts or any other districts, I view the country,” he said. “Our country has to be safe. And by the way, women, we’re doing well with the women vote because they want security, they want safety.”

The president said he would not allow a number of migrants heading to the United States to seek asylum, many from Honduras who are fleeing violence and poverty in the country.

However, the Trump administration is sending the military to the border in an attempt to prevent the migrants from seeking asylum. Trump suggested on Wednesday afternoon that could send up to 15,000 troops to the border. So far, his administration has approved 5,200 military personnel.

Trump said that women didn’t want “these people pouring into our country, totally unchecked,” even though those seeking asylum have to go through an application and vetting process.

“When you look at what happened to the Mexican police and you look at what happened two days ago, to the Mexican military, it’s a dangerous group of people,” Trump said of the caravan, some of whose members clashed with Mexican federal police at the Guatemala-Mexico border on Sunday.

“They’re not coming into our country,” the president said.