By Joshua Graves
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Republican strategist Ana Navarro told an audience at Morgan State University Monday that the only way for the GOP to rebuild its image in the age of Trump is to lose the next election and start from scratch.
Navarro, who is a political analyst for CNN, ABC and Telemundo, said the Republican Party has been taken over by President Trump and racist elements in American society. Being forced from power in the 2018 midterm elections might be one way for the GOP to reassess where it has gone and return to its traditional roots.
During the speech, Navarro also touched on the state of public discourse, immigration, racism, inequality and sexual harassment.
Navarro said the silver lining to Trump’s election is that more people are speaking their minds and they must defend themselves.
Navarro said she wished the administration would find a solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), an Obama-era regulation that allowed certain illegal aliens to stay in the country if they were brought here when they were children. Trump ended the program and has called on Congress to deal with the issue.
“We can’t allow this to go on without a solution and millions of people will be deported,” Navarro said.
In response to an audience question, Navarro said that while she is not part of the #notmypresident movement on social media, she does not believe that the president has done enough to help minorities.
“He has chosen not to be my president,” Navarro said. “So, I am not hashtag-not-my-president, [but] he hasn’t chosen to represent minorities.”
Navarro said Trump has not done enough to combat racism. “People say he isn’t a racist. Well when you allow racism and you promote it, you are in fact a racist,” she said.
Navarro spoke as part of Morgan State’s Presidential Distinguished Speaker Series, which is designed to bring in people with different viewpoints on pressing issues in American politics.
She made no bones about where she stood on Trump.
“If you are a Trump supporter, this may be the time you want to leave,” Navarro said at the beginning of her speech.
Navarro said she fled Nicaragua in the 1980s to escape the left-wing Sandinista government that ran the Central American country at the time. The problems caused by the leftists is what influenced her to become a conservative and a Republican when she arrived in Florida, she said.
She also expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan because he provided funds to a group of rebels that were fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas during that period. Reagan’s funding of the Nicaraguan contras was highly controversial at the time and eventually led to the Iran-contra scandal.
“These people were fighting for people like me, so I grew up in the historical Republican Party,” she said of the Reagan administration and the contras.
Navarro said that while she never supported Trump, it was his remark that all Mexicans are rapists and murders that really turned her against him.
“I could never support Donald Trump, but it was very hard to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Navarro said. “I would rather vote for someone who is a good person with bad judgment rather than vote for someone who is a bad person with bad judgment.”
Students at Morgan State took advantage of the Q&A to ask the political analyst about some of things she said throughout the speech.
Questions ranged from social issues to Trump’s recent decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Carley Petrey, a conservative who was in attendance, said she was surprised that Navarro did not like Trump.
“I thought it was much different, but at the same time we must see both sides so we can understand where they are coming from,” Petrey said. “It was a nice experience, but I didn’t agree with most of the things she said.”