A group of voters gave reasons for switching from supporting Joe Biden in 2020 to Donald Trump in 2024 and one woman’s furious vitriol for the returning president took a turn.
“I think that he’s a piece of shit,” the woman said of the president-elect in audio that was aired on the latest episode of The Bulwark’s The Focus Group podcast, released on Saturday.
Trump is “crazy,” lies and is “just a horrible human being,” she fumed.
Then came the 180: “But, like, I have to admit, as much as I hate Donald Trump, when he was in office, I saw more in my paycheck, the prices were down, things were better. Hate was up, of course hate was up but I could afford to live at that point and these past four years dramatically made things so much tougher.”
Listen from the 8-minute mark here:
CNN’s Dana Bash aired the soundbite on Tuesday’s Inside Politics.
Afterward, Bash’s colleague David Chalian commented: “There you go. If you want to understand the election, there it is. The economy, inflation, border, crime, that’s the stuff who brought some people who had been resistant to Donald Trump and don’t really like Donald Trump and don’t have a lot of faith in Donald Trump’s personality.”
It’s what “allowed them to cast their ballot for Trump this time,” he added. Watch the clip via RawStory here.
Elsewhere on The Focus Group segment, a second Biden-to-Trump voter admitted Trump “did seem kind of divisive” and “does tend to get people pretty angry and pretty worked up” but is “not fake.”
“Some people hide behind a mask, you know who he is,” she argued. “But he does tend to say some pretty abrasive stuff. It’s questionable.”
A third woman, meanwhile, acknowledged there were “some things I don’t like about Trump personally but I do believe he really does love his country and he does intend to improve the way things are and I also like the fact that Trump has quite a really good team assembled so far and I think it’s only going to get better.”
Republican strategist and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, who hosts the podcast, suggested those interviewed were the “kind of independent voter that broke for Trump and gave him his margins.”