Republican Voter Tells CNN Why She’s Not Voting For Bad ‘Role Model’ Trump: ‘I’d Never Want Him Around My Kids’
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 debuted a new election series on Wednesday night that will feature focus groups across the country of women voters talking about the issues important to them. The first group was held ahead of the South Carolina primary this weekend and was made up of Republican women discussing their choice between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump.
“We’re debuting a new series with our Randi Kaye. We’re calling it the 53%. That is the average number of women voters in presidential elections since 2000,” Anderson Cooper began, introducing the segment.
“More than half the electorate. It’s a powerful, important voting bloc throughout this 2024 race. We want to hear what women voters have to say about the candidates and the issues in candid conversations with one another. Randi’s goal is to be kind of a fly on the wall, not an interviewer per se, more of a facilitator to keep the conversation going. We begin in South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary this weekend. On the ballot, of course, is the state’s former governor, a woman, Nikki Haley. Here’s Randy’s report,” Cooper added.
After a short introduction, the voters began to weigh in, “Unfortunately, I think Donald Trump may very well win this primary, but my vote is going to Nikki Haley based on my conscience.”
“I think there are a lot of closet Nikki Haley supporters as well. And I’m really excited to see,” said another voter.
Kaye then jumped in to add some context about the group. “Five of the six Republican women in Greenville, South Carolina thought Nikki Haley was a good governor, but only three of them want her to be president,” Kaye said.
“The way she went in there and handled what I like to call those good old boys and gave it right back to them, and she stood up to them. And I’d love to see her do that in on the federal level,” said another one of the voters.
“She was a good governor, and I think she’d be a great president. I just am more in line with Donald Trump’s philosophy of government needs to be smaller, and they need to take less from us,” added another.
“I did not vote for him in 2016. I was aggravated with his language and the way he had to have a nickname for everybody, and none of them were flattering. But what he did in those four years made me a supporter,” a different voter said of Trump.
“To the rhetoric piece that you just said that was. That’s the main reason why I’m not voting for him this go around, because I think about him as an educator who I would want to work with as a principal. I would never I would never want to work for Donald Trump, and I would never want him around my kids that I’m teaching. I don’t think he’s the role model that we need for our country right now,” said a voter identified as Mary Bradley Pazdan.
“I’d love to work for Donald J. Trump, that would be awesome,” jumped in a different voter to a laugh from the group.
“But you know what I think, Mary Bradley, this group of southern ladies have a real hard time with his language,” Kaye added.
“The issue I have with Donald Trump is his demeanor and his language and how he treats people and women. We live in a very polarized country, and I feel that Donald Trump is very much on a vengeance campaign,” replied one of the Haley voters.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
