President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign will focus on exposing a dramatic shift toward socialism among the Democratic candidates while spotlighting the successes of the president’s administration, Kayleigh McEnany, press secretary for the Trump 2020 campaign, told The Epoch Times.
McEnany said it would have been unimaginable a decade ago for Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, to push for the radical proposals embraced by every major Democratic contender for the 2020 election.
“Every single member of the 2020 Democratic field will emerge with the scourge of socialism attached to them. They all want government takeover of health care, of energy, and with the Green New Deal. They want these radical proposals,” she said.
According to McEnany, the campaign didn’t plan to take on socialism, but is making the adjustment given that the majority of the Democratic field has embraced the ideology.
“We thought that debate ended in the 1980s. We thought it ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but here we are today with Democrats wanting to take us the way of Venezuela,” she said. “So we’re all very keenly focused on socialism—every single one of us in the campaign.”
Of the eight Democratic presidential candidates who have officially declared their intention to run and are polling at 1 percent or more, seven support the socialist Medicare for All and Green New Deal policies. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is the exception among them, although even she has co-sponsored the Medicare for All bill and views the Green New Deal as a key long-term goal.
“We’re going to expose it,” McEnany said. “You know, the facts don’t lie. Bernie Sanders back in 2013 and back when he was proposing legislation on single-payer health care, he had zero cosponsors. Now he has virtually the entirety of the Democratic field.
“Same for free college and all of these socialists proposals that would cost our economy tens of trillions of dollars, raise everyone’s taxes, completely explode our debt.
“This is socialism—it’s wrecked economies, it’s destroyed personal freedoms, and now it’s amazing to me that on a Democratic debate stage you are going to hear the word socialism.”
Only 18 percent of Americans view socialism in a positive light. While polling data for Medicare for All suggests that Americans support it, the approval rating drops significantly when the policy is described as “socialized medicine” or if respondents learn that the policy will result in tax increases and the elimination of private health insurance.
Support for socialism is highest among the younger voters. McEnany believes this is because the millennial generation was excluded from the economy during the Obama years.
“My peers—I’m a millennial—my peers couldn’t find jobs, they couldn’t find well-paying jobs, certainly couldn’t find a use for their college degrees,” McEnany said, adding that the trend is changing under Trump.
“Finally what we’re seeing is that millennials are having access to the job market, finding jobs, being able to leave their parents’ homes, being able to no longer delay life decisions like marriage and having kids,” she said. “So millennials had it tough. And now, finally, they’re getting opportunity thanks to President Trump.”
The campaign will take the message of the administration’s success to the social media platforms where millennials spend much of their time, including Facebook and Twitter.
“We do think that some millennials will come around and say, ‘Hey, yeah, I’m way better off today than I was four years ago. And that means I’ve got to vote for President Trump,’” McEnany said.
Epoch Times staff member Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to.
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