CNN’s Alysin Camerota sat down with several long-time Trump supporters for a focus group-style interview on Thursday’s “New Day” and pressed them for their thoughts on the president-elect’s transition and postelection performance.
Each of the participants, with whom Camerota has spoken with before on CNN, praised Trump’s performance so far.
“How do you feel about the ‘white nationalist movement,’ the alt-right, some Neo-Nazi salutes that we’ve seen? What are we to make of what feels like a groundswell of that with the Steve Bannon-Breitbart connection,” Camerota asked the group after one participant claimed that the people “that Trump has appointed or nominated have all been top of the class, number one in their field, extremely talented, great leaders on their own.”
Former Democratic state legislator and co-chair of the New Hampshire-based Women for Trump Paula Johnson jumped in to defend Trump: “That’s been around forever,” Johnson pushed back against Camerota’s questioning. “You know, if you keep reporting on it, it’s going to grow like a cancer. If you forget about it then it’s probably going to go away.” Using a favorite rhetorical device of the former reality-TV star: media bashing,” she added, “The media has to harp on everything. And it’s wrong.”
Johnson continued that many anti-Trump voters had little room to complain if they failed to vote in the election. “Voting is a privilege in this country,” Johnson said, before adding, “and you need to be legal, not like California where three million illegals voted.”
A confused Camerota asked Johson, “Where are you getting your information?”
“From the media!” Johnson insisted. “Some of them were CNN, I believe.”
“CNN said that 3 million illegal people voted in California?” an incredulous Camerota asked.
Johnson then decided to source her false report directly to President Obama.
“I think there was a good amount because the president told people that they could vote,” Johnson claimed. “They said, ‘The president said I could vote. I’m here illegally.’”
To her credit, Camerota kept up the line of questioning while seemingly holding back laughter.
“Did you hear President Obama said that illegal people could vote?” asked Camerota, to which nearly all the participants nodded their heads and replied, “Yes.”
“Tell me, where?” Camerota demanded.
At that point, another Trump voter directed Camerota to, “Google it. You could find it on Facebook.”
So she did.
Camerota, a former long-time Fox News host, was then forced to read a recent Mediate headline to the group that read, “Fox deceptively edits Obama interview to falsely claim he told illegal immigrants to vote.”
The Trump voters were apparently referring to Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney’s false claim that the president “appears to encourage illegals to vote, and he promises no repercussions if they do.”
While the above clip is clearly deceptively edited to conflate undocumented immigrants with all Latino voters in the U.S., Fox Business Network not only failed to make that distinction but falsely implied such a distinction was never even made. In fact, Fox Business Network left out the portion of Obama’s comments in which he explicitly stated that undocumented immigrants do not have the legal right to vote.
Still, Trump voters remained wedded to the fake news nearly a month after the election.
“You as you sit here today think that millions of illegal people voted in this country and you believe that there was widespread voting abuse? In the millions of people?” a clearly exasperated Camerota continued to challenge the Trump voters.
“California allows it,” Johnson said.
“They do not allow illegals — you mean voter fraud, California allows?” asked a dumbfounded Camerota.
“I believe there was voter fraud in this country,” she insisted, remaining steadfast to her false belief.
I don't know which members of the non-college educated white Trump voters Democrats can peel off to win but it's not going to be easy.
