Republican Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, the lone minority Republican woman in Congress, said Thursday that she is open to supporting President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Beutler notably did not vote for Trump in the 2016 election and has criticized him on a range of issues, including his declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for the border wall and, more recently, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria.
If President Obama had ever hinted at using emergency powers in this way, I would have spoken out strongly against it, and consistency demands that I do the same now. #NationalEmergency pic.twitter.com/9qGLncRCUX
— JaimeHerreraBeutler (@HerreraBeutler) February 15, 2019
However, Beutler suggested to reporters during an on-the-record lunch with Winning For Women on Thursday that some of the administration’s economic successes are too big for her to ignore. (RELATED: New Poll Shows Good News For Trump Reelection As Voters Give Him Credit For Economy)
“With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, my district, that unemployment number is remarkable,” she said. “And it’s the first time — especially among women, especially among minorities … among the disabled — that those numbers are at an all-time low, and they now have the ability to hunt jobs.”
Beutler is of Mexican descent and was named to MSNBC’s “Top 10 Latino Politicians to Watch.”
Beutler also explained that she has an obligation to voters in her district, which went for Trump in 2016, to understand why they support him.
“Has my opinion on him as person changed? No. Would I do his job the way he’s doing it? No,” Beutler said. “But my district did vote for him, and I think one of the biggest mistakes people are going to make is not respecting their voters.”