President Donald Trump joked about the Democratic Party's messaging on Tuesday, quipping that he started to dislike himself after watching so many negative ads against him.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars of negative ads. Nobody's ever been hit like that. I used to go home, I started disliking myself," Trump said during remarks at the National Federation of Independent Businesses 75th Anniversary Celebration.
Trump made the remarks while speaking about his push to get Democrats to support legislation to change the immigration system.
The Trump administration has implemented a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal border crossings, charging all individuals who cross the border illegally with unlawful entry. People who claim to seek asylum are also charged with unlawful entry and are taken into custody until their case is processed.
Federal law prevents children from being held in the same detention facility as those charged with unlawful entry, causing border patrol agents to separate children from their families. The change in policy has triggered bipartisan backlash.
"We need Democrats' support. They don't want to give it because Democrats love open borders," Trump said.
Trump added that Democrats think those crossing the border could be future voters for their party.
"They view that as potential voters. They're going to go vote for Democrats," Trump said. "Because they can't depend on their policies which are horrible. They found that out in the last presidential election. In fact, their only policy was that Donald Trump is a bad guy, he is a bad person, vote against him."
"The problem is, they never told anybody what they're doing," he added. "They didn't talk about tax cuts. They want to take away your tax cuts, and they want to substantially increase your taxes. They didn't talk about crime. All they talked about was Trump."
He then went back to the 2016 election and how some Democrats voted for him over his opponent Hillary Clinton.
"So when people got to the booth, they said we are going to vote Democrat. But then they get up there and say what does she stand for? What did they stand for?" Trump said. "They just say 'Trump!' No, I'm going with Trump, and that's what happened. We got tremendous Democrats support. It's a beautiful thing. That was a beautiful night, do you agree?"
The crowd applauded and cheered at Trump's comments.
"That was some night," he said.