Opinion | Geraldo Rivera comes to his senses on Trump

WALLACE: I want to talk to Lisa about this. There was a lot of talk this week about whether or not this was politically smart, which it seems to me misses the real point, and that is, was this wrong? Was it over the line to say "go back where you came from"?

LISA BOOTHE, CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I wouldn’t defend, necessarily, the tweet that he sent out but I would also point out there’s been a lot of comparisons made to the late Senator John McCain when he did shut down hecklers who called President Obama an — then-candidate Obama an Arab. But you have still Representative John Lewis then compare them to George Wallace and, you know, basically fostering an environment of hate when we saw 1963, white supremacist bombed a church.

WALLACE: Let's try to stick to Donald Trump and what he did this week.

BOOTHE: The point is, Chris, is that's the environment that we operate in where you've seen for a long time the left weaponize these words of racism or sexism against their political opponents.

We also saw that with Mitt Romney —

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: But you’re not answer[ing] my question, which is, was it wrong for the president to say send them back to the country they go — why don’t you go back to the country from which you came? Was that wrong?

BOOTHE: But I'm a political analyst, Chris, that's not my job to say it was wrong or not.

WALLACE: So, you don't have a view?

BOOTHE: Ask his — ask his White House and his campaign. It’s my job to analyze the optics and the politics of this. And to Jonathan’s point, I would say, I think President Trump has good instincts in looking at the electorate. He may not have looked at that “Axios” report that you guys reported on, the poll that shows that these four members of Congress, particularly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Omar absolutely toxic with key groups of voters.

But he has political instincts, and we’d seen him set up and tee off 2020 as the left is anti-American, they are socialist, they are way too far extreme for America, and that’s the direction they want to go in. And if you want to elevate four people to make that point, these four women meet those descriptions.

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