East County Rep. Duncan Hunter distanced himself slightly from Donald Trump on Thursday, telling the Washington press he is “not a surrogate” for the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Everybody’s asking me to explain all these things that he said,” Hunter told The Hill, a widely followed political website. “Some of these things, I don’t know what Donald Trump is thinking.”
“I am not a surrogate. I am a Congressman. I can’t speak for anybody else but me,” he said.
Hunter endorsed Trump in February, becoming one of the first members of Congress to do so. But he has taken issue with Trump in the past, writing that the billionaire developer’s pledge to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants “is not within the scope of possibility.”
Hunter represents most of East San Diego County north of Interstate 8 and east of Interstate 15.
