Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was pressed by CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday night over the White House's economic messaging and the Republican Party's standing on immigration, in an interview posted on YouTube (https://youtu.be/9EVdWRnY1os) and reported by Alternet.

The exchange began after Tapper confronted Roy with footage of First Lady Melania Trump hosting an “opulent” White House dinner scene, complete with expensive dinnerware, at a time when many Americans are struggling with affordability.

“Can you explain the worldview of the president and first lady when they — when she puts up that state dinner video?” Tapper asked. “It’s very fancy. But it's giving kind of like Nancy Reagan, White House china vibes, and then President [Donald] Trump talking about how there is no affordability crisis.”

Tapper's comparison reached back to 1981, when First Lady Nancy Reagan's newly unveiled Lenox state china service, paid for with private donations, drew criticism amid the early 1980s recession.

“I'm never going to try to explain what someone else is thinking about on any particular issue,” Roy replied.

“But what I can tell you is what the people of Texas are telling me and people across the country. … [P]eople are concerned, of course, about affordability, and the president's right to raise it,” he added, without addressing the voter backlash and polling slump that followed Trump after he denied the existence of an affordability crisis a few months earlier.

“It takes a while [to fix]. We've been in this term for 18 months. It takes a while to reverse the mistakes, by the way, of both parties. Both parties have been failing on the spending front that's driven inflation,” Roy said.

Roy then urged voters to give Republicans a chance to “finish the job,” even as the term has been marked by spiking inflation and gas prices amid Trump's unilateral war with Iran and tariff policies toward U.S. trading partners — an economic backdrop that has kept affordability at the center of the administration's political difficulties.

Tapper then noted that voters appear to be turning on Trump's immigration policies, to the point where even once-loyal GOP candidates are attacking the president in order to side with their constituents.

“[Trump] was elected the second time, but I think the issue was a lot of people expected they were going to go after the worst of the worst, the bad, the so-called bad hombres,” Tapper said. “And yet we've seen people who are not the worst of the worst, not bad hombres being taken.”

Tapper cited the deaths of two Minneapolis residents at the hands of federal officers, as well as a Florida GOP congresswoman demanding “dignity.”

“And now we have an issue that Republicans used to have the advantage on immigration. And voters are saying they prefer Democrats over Republicans on the issue,” Tapper said. “Do you understand why the pendulum swung that much?”

“Well, first of all, I'm not sure I accept that the pendulum has swung that much,” Roy said, disputing polls that indicate otherwise. “I think most of the people that I talked to, again, not just Republicans … and people are very happy that our streets are safer, that we're not having as much fentanyl, that we don't have as many, uh, cartel problems and gang problems in South Texas.”

Roy's argument, however, runs counter to surveys showing Trump and his party trailing on almost every major issue — including immigration, an area where the president and the GOP once dominated. Whether that shift holds — and how many more Republicans follow the candidates Tapper described in distancing themselves from the administration's enforcement approach — is one of the open questions as the party heads toward its next nationwide electoral test.