New Hampshire woman accuses Bloomberg Politics of falsely painting her as Trump supporter
Jessica DeBurro appears in Bloomberg Politics focus group on July 30, 2015. [Bloomberg Politics]
July 30, 2015
A New Hampshire woman featured in a Bloomberg Politics video said on Thursday night that she was misrepresented as a supporter of Donald Trump when in reality, she backs neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
"The questions were geared mostly toward the positive," she said. "They were all, 'Tell me something you like about him' or 'What makes him appealing to voters,'" Jessica DeBurro (pictured above)told Talking Points Memo. "It was all positive-focused, not 'What do you not like' or 'Why do you like this other candidate better."
DeBurro was part of a focus group of 12 people initially described by Bloomberg as Trump supporters. In reality, she said, only one person in the group was "100 percent a Trump supporter," although they all had him listed as part of their top three choices for the Republican presidential nomination.
"What they're taking is these snippets of us saying positive things to answer questions where they asked us to state a positive thing and then representing it as if we're all his staunchest supporters, and we're not," she said, adding that she did not know Trump would be the focus of the discussion until interviewer John Heilemann mentioned it prior to the segment being filmed on Wednesday night.
The video shows DeBurro saying she first heard of Trump, who is currently the leading GOP contender, when she was a child.
"I knew that he was a wealthy, successful man," she says. "I remember asking my mother if I could write him a letter to ask him how he made his money so that I could do it too."
She is also shown saying that Trump "speaks the truth," particularly in regard to immigration policy.
"He doesn't care what people think," DeBurro says in the video. Another group participant is seen calling Trump's intention to build a wall along the US-Mexico border "common sense."
But what the video did not show, she said, was concerns within the group that the former reality TV star is a "hothead" who could "say something really stupid."
Watch the footage, as released on Thursday morning, below.