Donald Trump predicted that he would transform the Republican Party into a “worker’s party” if he wins the 2016 election.
“Five, 10 years from now—different party,” Trump told Bloomberg Politics during an extended sit-down folded within the magazine’s profile on Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus. “You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry. What I want to do, I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party.”
Trump’s comments immediately caught attention on social media, given that “worker’s party” is a term adopted by many left-wing socialist political organizations. The term has also been used by right-wing groups like the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazi Party.
In the Bloomberg interview, Trump outlined a new vision for the GOP vastly different from the laissez-faire, hawkish, inclusive-to-minorities plan the party set forth after losing the 2012 presidential election. Trump’s Republican Party would restrict free trade, protect Social Security and push the U.S. to turn inwards.
As the billionaire mogul told Bloomberg, his new model for the party came from his own opinions and from chatting with Republican voters on the campaign trail rather than from “deep analysis.”
His signature promise to build a wall along the southern U.S. border, he said, came not as a rejection of the GOP’s autopsy report but from an “instinctive” feeling that something had to be done about immigration.
“When I made my [announcement] speech at Trump Tower, the June 16 speech,” he told Bloomberg, “I didn’t know about the Gang of Eight. … I just knew instinctively that our borders are a mess.”
Trump told the magazine that his well-attended rallies and presumptive nomination prove that he has the right ideas to move the party forward.
“All these millions and millions of people,” he said. “It’s a movement.”
