Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha chalked up President Donald Trump’s popularity to the fact that he sounds like a Democrat from 1989.
Rocha joined CNN’s Laura Coates on Friday and during a segment taking live calls, he theorized that Trump’s popularity stems from the fact that he says exactly what Democrats were saying only a few decades ago.
“My question is, Donald Trump is a very scary guy, what makes him so popular?” one caller asked.
“This is my favorite question. We‘ve talked about it on this program before,” Rocha said. “I joined the Democratic Party in 1989 because I wanted to fight NAFTA. I wanted to drain the swamps. I wanted to make sure that my tax dollars weren‘t going to foreign wars or wasted.”
Democrats from 1989, he continued, sound like Trump today.
“That sounds like Donald Trump today. That’s why we lose to him, is we’ve let him steal our verbiage,” he said. “We have quit talking about working Americans, keeping America safe, doing the things that we did when I joined this party. And that’s the reason — he is scary, but he’s not scary to enough people to lose elections because he sounds like the Democrats and why I joined this party.”
Former Trump campaign advisor Bryan Lanza defended the president, saying he’s “not scary when you think about what’s scary without Trump in Washington, D.C.”
“I’m sorry you feel scared, but I think more and more people feel comfortable with what’s going on,” he said.
Watch the video via CNN.
