President Trump spoke Tuesday at the National Federation of Independent Business’s 75th-anniversary event in Washington, and he didn’t confine himself to the topics that members of “the voice of small business” would be assumed to be most interested in: taxes and health insurance, for instance.
Instead, to enthusiastic applause, he spoke at length, and in phrasings more commonly on offer at his arena rallies, about immigrants.
Breaking with other business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has emphasized that migrant and immigrant labor is necessary to perform all the work that needs doing in America, the NFIB has historically stood in opposition to proposals offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. Early this decade, citing membership surveys, the group took the position that all undocumented workers should return to their countries of origin. More than 90% of NFIB members, the organization stated earlier this year, “believe that illegal immigration is a serious problem.”
CSPAN posted a video of Trump’s speech in its entirety, and took notice of the president’s having literally embraced the flag after speaking:
NFIB each month releases a survey of small-business sentiment. The latest reading, released just last week, hit a 34-year high despite a handful of concerns that included finding workers.
The trade and lobbying group, which in the 2016 elections financially backed Republican candidates almost exclusively, expressed gratitude for Trump’s appearance at the event Tuesday:
On social media, though, the group faced backlash, with some self-described former NFIB members hearing echoes in the event of the partisanship that caused them to leave the organization:
Others forecast that the group might find itself in need of distancing itself from the rhetoric deployed by the president against a backdrop emblazoned with NFIB logos, in the way that the Boy Scouts did a year ago after Trump spoke at that organization’s jamboree: