RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel
Tapper to RNC chair: Ad is racially incendiary
04:49 - Source: CNN
Washington CNN  — 

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel declined on Sunday to address an incendiary immigration video shared last week by President Donald Trump, instead saying that, “we know good people are trying to come into the country, too.”

The online video, which was tweeted by Trump last Wednesday, accuses Democrats, without evidence, of plotting to help people it depicts as Central American invaders overrun the nation with cop killers.

“Listen, we know good people are trying to get into this country, too. They see the prosperity, they see the economic growth,” McDaniel told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“They’re coming to this country because they see it as a beacon of hope. We need to find a legal way to get people here, we need to find a way to fix our immigration system. Democrats won’t work with us,” she said.

The web video – produced for the Trump campaign – features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had been deported but returned to the United States and was convicted in February in the slaying of two California deputies.

“I’m going to kill more cops soon,” a grinning Bracamontes is shown saying in court as captions flash across the screen reading, “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.”

McDaniel told Tapper that by sharing the video, the President was simply trying to bring attention to Bracamontes’ story.

“I think the President’s highlighting the point once again that we don’t – and I think everybody agrees with this, Jake – we didn’t want this individual in our country,” she said.

“We don’t want people being deported and being criminals and then coming back into this country.”

Last week, several Republican lawmakers distanced themselves from the web video, including Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who called the video “sickening.”