It's been almost two weeks since Donald Trump made his controversial "rapists" statement about Mexican immigrants, and the backlash just keeps on coming. But in an interview on Fox News Saturday, the Republican presidential hopeful said he doesn't get why.
"I knew it was going to be bad, because all my life I've been told this: If you're successful, you don't run for office," Trump said. "I didn't know it was going to be quite this severe."
Fox asked him about the backlash in the context of a shooting in San Francisco on Wednesday, in which an illegal immigrant allegedly shot and killed a woman in the street. "If you talk about it, you're a racist," Trump said. "I don't understand it."
He did, however, admit that he's hurting his "brand" by running for office. NASCAR is the latest to cut business ties with Trump, moving an awards ceremony that was supposed to be held at the Trump National Doral in Miami. "I'm very surprised at NASCAR," he said. "These are people that want to stop illegal immigration."
In the meantime, other Republican candidates are making a point to disavow Trump's remarks as racist. The latest to do so is Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican. " I don't think he represents the Republican Party, and his views are way out of the mainstream of what Republicans think," Bush said on Saturday in New Hampshire, Huffington Post reports. "No one suggests that we shouldn't control our borders — everybody has a belief that we should control our borders. But to make these extraordinarily ugly kind of comments is not reflective of the Republican Party. Trump is wrong on this."
Even so, Democrats, including Hillary Clinton supporter America Ferrera, are celebrating the way Trump may have just motivated more Latinos to head to the polls next year and vote for the opposition.