GOP strategist and Executive Director of Principles First Brittany Martinez joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss
Category
đ
NewsTranscript
00:00Something else that President Trump won on is his messaging surrounding immigration.
00:05And Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said that in his first 100 days, the border is now secure.
00:11And CBP found that there were record low border crossings back in March.
00:16Although President Trump's deportation policies are largely controversial in this first 100 days,
00:21do you think immigration is a bright spot or rather brighter spot when you're looking at the economy and tariffs?
00:27But how would you grade President Trump on his immigration stance?
00:31I think immigration, maybe for the first time ever in a presidential,
00:35was ranked really high in what people were worried about right there next to the economy.
00:40And so I think Americans also wanted someone who is going to be strong on our border security
00:44and make sure that our America's generosity isn't taken advantage of.
00:48However, I don't think that the way some of these things have been handled has been very helpful to the president.
00:54So, you know, I don't think tariffs are great.
00:56I don't think what he's done with immigration is great,
00:57especially with some of those very out there cases that people are paying attention to.
01:02I think that Americans are concerned.
01:05And also, I think that some Americans aren't totally buying what's coming out of the White House.
01:10And they're saying, well, release all the documents and let us decide for ourselves.
01:13And we're getting sort of some redacted paperwork, I guess, for lack of a better term,
01:17or just certain pages of certain documents, right?
01:20And, you know, I think it's important to have strong border security.
01:24But I don't know that he's done it the best way either.
01:27And I think he needs to sort of sharpen the way that he's doing things.
01:32When we talk about Elon Musk, he was taking a sledgehammer to the government, right?
01:37And we said, you know, you need a scalpel approach.
01:39And so I think the president should take some of that into consideration
01:43and do a scalpel approach of how he's handling tariffs and immigration X, Y, Z,
01:48because he's kind of going full force immediately.
01:52And Americans are kind of a little concerned, I think.
01:57I want to now set our sights abroad.
02:00There are two wars that President Trump talked about on the campaign trail.
02:03And one of them, he said, I will end it in a day.
02:06And that was Russia, Ukraine.
02:07That war is still ongoing.
02:09The United States is in the midst of negotiations between the two.
02:12Some experts I've spoken to have said President Trump seems to be rushing this,
02:16seems to be appeasing President Putin just a little bit there.
02:20When it comes to the Middle East, there is still a war between Israel and Hamas.
02:24How would you grade President Trump's foreign policy?
02:26Talk to us about that.
02:29I don't think very great either.
02:30I mean, when we talk about ending these wars, one, as a proud American,
02:34I know that we like to consider ourselves a global superpower.
02:37However, ultimately, at the end of the day, if Putin or Hamas doesn't want to end the war,
02:43I don't know how much influence a U.S. president could have.
02:46And I don't think that's specific to Trump.
02:48I would have said the same thing about Biden.
02:50I think it's important for us to be able to come to the negotiating table and bring people together.
02:56However, I don't know when Republicans became Putin's sympathizers.
02:59When you think about the Cold War and Reagan and tear down that wall,
03:04I think that we've taken a very stark, different approach from back then.
03:10And we have to remember, I think we're doing a better job on this with Israel,
03:14is that Israel did not start this war.
03:16It was Hamas.
03:17Ukraine did not start this war.
03:19It was Putin.
03:19And we have to remember who our allies are and who our adversaries are.