Key Trump voting bloc abandons him in new focus group: 'Treat people with respect'

One of the new focus groups hosted by The Bulwark on Sept. 10 included Latino voters who had voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 and now regret their decision.

In a Wednesday report, the site said that the former Trump voters were angry about the economy and frustrated by the way that his administration was handling immigration and the mass deportations. Most gave Trump a "D" or "F" for his grade. One woman said she gave Trump a "D" because she was trying to be nice.

"The focus group included voters from swing state Nevada, blue state California, and red state Florida, as well as states, including New Jersey, that have traditionally been heavily Democratic but moved toward Republicans in the Trump era. New Jersey is one of two states with gubernatorial elections this November," the report said.

The focus group confirms polling data reported by Politico earlier this week. His approval from Latino voters dropped from a net-negative 12 points in February to a net-negative 20 in September.

A Virginia woman said that the country is headed in a "negative" direction.

"Grocery prices, we have the tariffs, we have the immigration going on, and also using the National Guard instead of police to fight crime," she cited.

“I think a lot of people are a lot more hateful," said a woman from Colorado. "They feel they can be a lot more open about it, because they see it everywhere so much that no one is really trying to be nice and get along and respect differences. They think it’s okay to pass their judgments and stereotypes willy-nilly because no one does anything about it, because they see the people in control doing it.”

The focus group was before the slaying of far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

Adrian Carrasquillo, who has covered immigration issues and Latino voters for the past decade, said that he was struck by the focus group's nuance around such issues.

Reed, from Nevada, said he liked Trump's moves on immigration, but then witnessed the suffering it was causing as "families [were] being ripped apart."

“I didn’t think it was going to be that dramatic, where it’s going to be hurtful in that sense. So, that kind of changed your mood from ‘Okay, the country is getting better on that immigration part.’ The borders are getting more strict, but at what cost?” he asked.

Beth said she also had full faith in the administration, but that quickly fell away when she witnessed the lack of a "humane" approach. She compared the willy-nilly deportations to the arbitrary firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers by tech billionaire Elon Musk under the executive order to eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse."

“It’s bullying at another level,” she said. “I live in America, I don’t want to be in a dictatorship. I still want to be in a democratic nation that has rules, has regulations. . . . This is America, we gotta treat people with respect and dignity and I think a lot of that has gone out the window.”

Read the full report here.