If MSNBC was hoping to display cracks in the MAGA coalition stemming from former President Donald Trump’s criminal trials, its hosts will have to track down a more pro-Biden focus group than they did this week.
Correspondent Blayne Alexander was in Gwinnett County, Georgia this week where she interviewed three Trump-supporting residents who said the former president’s various legal troubles appear politically motivated and conveniently timed to hurt 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 praised 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 side 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.”
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Similar alarms have been raised by Biden allies based on recent polling. President Trump has garnered as much as 20% of support among Black voters, a record high for any Republican presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Era. Similar sentiments among Black voters were present during interviews last year as well.
“[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.
In response, the president has made attempts to shore up support from Black Americans. During remarks at a historically Black university commencement in 2023, Biden claimed white supremacy is the greatest threat facing Americans today. Another area the president may want to cite is his appeal to the U.S. Census Bureau to ask Black Americans about knowledge of slavery among family ancestors. The appeal comes amid a renewed push for reparations, especially in California where Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom convened a task force that suggested that the state’s more than two million Black residents should receive up to three trillion dollars as settlement for the state’s acquiescence to 19th-century runaway slave laws.
Asked about the perceived strategy, a Biden aide told the outlet that too much was being made of the president’s upcoming visits and that Black voters are not getting any outsize attention as a result of falling poll numbers. “We are treating our core constituencies, including black voters, like persuadable AND turnout voters — not expecting their support at the end but earning it now.”