In the new Wall Street Journal poll of swing-state voters, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden 52%-32% on “immigration and border security”; the reasons are beyond obvious and the only question is if Trump can stop shooting himself in the foot on the issue.
One apparent misstep was his claim that he’d spoken with the family of Ruby Garcia, a Michigan woman killed by her illegal immigrant lover, while getting carried away — as usual — at a campaign rally.
Ruby’s sister Mavi told a local TV reporter: “He did not speak with any of us.”
Asked by The Post for comment, Trump’s campaign declined to discuss the issue on the record — showing wisdom, we’d say, in not falling into an endless round of stories that do no one any good.
The candidate himself could show similar smarts by dropping his talk of illegal migrants purely as “animals.”
Sorry, Don: They’re people, most of them not all that different from actual US citizens who may be willing to vote for you, not least because they’re also concerned about uncontrolled immigration.
Citizens (say, legal Hispanic immigrants) whose votes you could lose if they get the impression you see them as animals, or simply find that language offends their basic Christian principles.
It’s inside the bounds of campaign rhetoric to use “animal” when you’re talking about specific cop-killers, rapists and so on.
And you can surely use colorful language to describe the insanity of Biden’s policies and frightening scenes like The Post’s viral-video mob that rushed through the Rio Grande barbed wire and overran the Border Patrol the other day.
Call that smug illegal-migrant influencer, Leonel Moreno, almost any name you like; he’s earned it.
But “animal” talk will only make it even harder for the country to have a serious discussion about controlling immigration, something it desperately needs even if you win and do all you can via executive action.
Biden’s record on the border vs. yours is already black-and-white — keeping up the extreme sell only puts off potential new Trump voters you need to win the election.