If MSNBC was aiming to highlight divisions within the MAGA coalition due to former President Donald Trump’s criminal trials, they’ll need to find a more pro-Biden focus group than the one they had this week. Correspondent Blayne Alexander was in Gwinnett County, Georgia this week, where she interviewed three Trump-supporting residents. They expressed the belief that the former president’s legal troubles seem politically motivated and conveniently timed to undermine his campaign.
Asked whether the trials have caused his support to waver, Antonio Jones said the opposite. “It’s actually caused me to support him more. I just don’t believe there’s a coincidence that we have a trial happening in Atlanta, we have one happening in New York. So the question people are beginning to ask themselves, like I did, ‘Why now?’”
A young man who will be voting for the first time cited Trump’s ability to “keep fighting” despite the onslaught from Democratic prosecutors and the Biden Justice Department. “He still hasn’t given up. He keeps fighting to do what’s right,” he said.
Lisa Babbage, who is Black, said she has spoken with many former Democrats who now are aligned with Trump. “They have changed their political persuasion to independent, and they are looking forward to voting for Trump,” she told Alexander, “because now they find something in common with a political candidate at that level.” Asked to expand on her remarks on commonality, Babbage said her friends “have felt persecuted by the system of American injustice, and it’s not a stretch for them to think that Trump may be a victim as well.”
“People see that there’s some kind of commonality between himself and maybe all the Black men that have been incarcerated and the families that have been impacted,” she said.
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Biden allies have expressed similar concerns based on recent polling data. President Trump has gained support from as much as 20% of Black voters, marking a record high for any Republican presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Era. Similar sentiments among Black voters were also evident during interviews conducted last year.
“[Biden is] letting all the immigrants in. He’s just a terrible guy. He doesn’t do anything. Kamala ain’t nowhere to be found. This whole presidency was a failure this year,” said one man interviewed on the street.
