'We are not the crazy ones - they are the craven ones': GOP pollster on her own party
Senator Ted Cruz speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Latino Leadership Summit. (Gage Skidmore)
June 13, 2024
A super-cut of Republican lawmakers attacking Donald Trump began Thursday's episode of "Deadline White House."
"All those people are engaged in a project to make you think that we're crazy," said host Nicolle Wallace. "They said those things. They said those things. And then they fell into line. Democrats, for their part, today welcomed Trump to Capitol Hill in a very different way."
Outside the Capitol meeting was a rolling billboard playing footage of the attack on the Capitol.
"I never thought Trump was a good idea," said Wallace, who left the Republican Party after dedicating her professional political career to it. "It has divided circles of former friends, divided family and friends and neighbors. It is — I've always thought it was a bet with the devil. But I guess the point in that match is, so did they. So did Ted Cruz. So did Marco Rubio. So did Nancy Mace. So did Mitch McConnell."
Today, however, was something different, and she wondered why.
Sarah Longwell, known for leading Republican Voters Against Trump, is also a pollster and has hosted focus groups with GOP voters who previously cast ballots for Donald Trump. She confessed she, like Wallace, can't understand why they're bowing down to Trump as well.
Meanwhile, Republicans are fighting to become Trump's "lickspittles and toadies," Longwell said.
Among the things she revealed later in the interview is that swing voters take issue with Trump's smear of soldiers and "sounds like a crazy person when he talks."
She argued that the way that Joe Biden will win the White House in 2024 was by Trump reminding people why they hate him.
Another group of voters she pointed out are Republican voters who cast a ballot for Trump twice but won't again.
"The reason they say they will not vote for him again is because he lied about the results of the election saying that it was stolen, and then he fomented an insurrection," Longwell explained. "And for a lot of these Republicans, that was their red line, that was the end of it for them and the fact that these people are now willing to make videos, put their faces on billboards saying absolutely not! Trump is unfit! I won't vote for him! They have the courage to do that. They're willing to make that case."
That comes amid members of Congress worshiping Trump, despite claiming "to be devout Christians, who purport to back the blue, would purport to stand for the rule of law — they're there to cheer Donald Trump." The "guy who was morally and temperamentally responsible for the insurrection."
"It is stomach churning, and it is gaslighting," Longwell continued. "The kind of 'emperor has no clothes' kind of phenomenon, where it is just important on days like this that we remind people we are not the crazy ones, they are the craven ones."
See the full comments in the video below or at the link here.
Leave a Comment