Radio host Rush Limbaugh played the 1995 State of the Union address on Tuesday to give listeners an idea of just how similar Donald Trump sounds to former President Bill Clinton on illegal immigration.
Critics of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign have said for months his rhetoric on the issue is too harsh. Mr. Limbaugh sought to question those charges by using Mr. Clinton’s televised address to the nation on Jan. 24, 1995.
Mr. Clinton said:
“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”
“Sounds exactly like Donald Trump, doesn’t it?” Mr. Limbaugh asked. “Do you ever recall hearing Clinton say this back in the ’90s? I mean, you should have seen people’s eyes on the other side of the glass listening to this. They don’t recall ever having heard it before, even though we all watched it. When I found the bite, I was stunned like you probably are.”
The conservative pundit then said Mr. Clinton’s address is proof that “establishment” figures have thwarted the will of the American people for decades.
“Do not underestimate the power of this issue in terms of motivating people and turning people out,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “And causing people who haven’t voted in a while to maybe show up and vote. It’s that big. And the establishment totally misses this. Obviously they miss it. Because they have yet to take it seriously. And, in fact, they’ve done everything they can to make sure what Clinton was advocating, what Trump’s advocating, never happens.”
A CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday gives the Republican presidential nominee a two-point edge over Mrs. Clinton. A national survey conducted Sept. 1-4 put Mr. Trump ahead 45 percent to 43 percent.
The network’s poll has a sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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