| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo and Teresa Wiltz
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Then-President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion with African American supporters, Wednesday, June 10, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | What up, Recast family! President Joe Biden issues his first veto, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin flaunt their coziness at dinner at the Kremlin and the stars of “Ted Lasso” drop by the White House briefing room. First, though, we focus on former President Trump’s looming indictment and his unshakable support among Republican voters of color. Even as the expected indictment of Donald Trump by a Manhattan prosecutor looms over the 2024 GOP primary contest, the former president’s standing among a particular subset of voters remains intact: Republicans of color and independent voters of color who tend to vote for the GOP. According to a recent CNN survey, Trump’s support among this cohort is at 56 percent, compared to his next closest rival, the yet-to-announce Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose support among this group is at just 27 percent. That same survey found that Trump and DeSantis were virtually tied when it comes to white GOP voters. The CNN analysis wasn’t just based on CNN’s own polling. It also included a recent Quinnipiac University survey to bolster its conclusion — because voters of color make up such small slices of their Republican-voter samples. In fact CNN noted “the combined voter of color sample size of the CNN/SSRS and Quinnipiac University is about 200 respondents.” Yes, that’s miniscule.
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Then-President Donald Trump give a thumbs up to the cheering crowd after a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable Sept. 14, 2020, in Phoenix. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo | And to be clear, people of color make up a small percentage of the base voting in the GOP presidential primaries. According to entrance and exit poll data in 2016 — the last open GOP presidential primary — white voters made up overwhelming majorities of the first four early voting states, including 97 percent of Iowa caucus-goers; 96 percent of New Hampshire primary voters; 96 percent of South Carolina primary voters; and 85 percent of Nevada caucus-goers.
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That makes the small number of voters of color all the more significant. Should the twice-impeached ex-commander-in-chief find himself in a tight contest for the Republican nomination, voters of color could make the difference in him winning and losing.
A couple of things to note: Both surveys were taken before the bombshell announcement Trump made that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, calling on his supporters to take to the streets should this come to pass. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is said to be near the conclusion of his probe. He’s widely expected to bring charges against Trump stemming from hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels during the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential election.
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New Yorker Stephanie Lu criticizes District Attorney Alvin Bragg and a possible criminal indictment of the former president on Monday in front of the New York Criminal Courts building. | Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo | Trump has also ridiculed Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, claiming the prosecutor is running a “blatant and unconstitutional attempt to interfere with a federal election.” He referred to Bragg as a “racist in reverse” and said the probe is happening because deep-pocketed Democratic political donor George Soros is calling the shots, a typical refrain. Trump’s targeting of a prominent person of color harkens back to his familiar attacks against his predecessor former President Barack Obama (birtherism), Judge Gonzalo Curiel (attacked for his Mexican ancestry and suggesting he was incapable of being impartial) and many others throughout the years. But his standing remains firm among Republicans of color. That’s because he can point to legislative and political wins that his supporters argue are beneficial to marginalized communities. “No. 1 is the economy,” says Rina Shah, a conservative political consultant and delegate to the Republican National Convention during the 2016 cycle. “You know, these minority voters really, really do vote with their pocketbooks.” Under Trump, Shah says, the economy was stronger, with lower unemployment rates, low inflation and bigger profit margins for business owners. And that, says Shah, who is of Asian descent, helps Republicans of color look past the slew of criminal allegations Trump faces, including that he attempted to subvert the 2020 election. “There’s a safeness with Trump for a multitude of reasons, but there’s also a sense that no one is speaking to them from the Republican side except for Trump,” says Shah, who considers herself a never-Trumper and has not endorsed anyone in the 2024 GOP primary.
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| Former Texas Republican Rep. Mayra Flores agrees that Trump’s strongest selling point among voters of color is the economy, but she adds for many, Latinos especially, border security is a top priority. “During the Trump administration, we had a very secure border. It was his policies that secured the border,” says Flores, whose husband is a 15-year veteran of the Border Patrol. For her it's personal. “I actually took my husband’s safety for granted during that time,” Flores tells The Recast, implying her husband has been less safe on the job during the current administration. “My husband wasn’t getting shot at during the Trump administration,” says Flores, who now serves as a fellow at the nonpartisan Texas Public Policy Foundation.
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Then-Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) attends a news conference on rising suicide rates at the U.S. Border Patrol, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, on Capitol Hill. | Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo | She calls the pending indictment from New York “a politically motivated prosecution” and says it has not deterred her support for the former president, even though she says DeSantis is doing an impeccable job in Florida and is evidence Republicans have a deep bench. Diante Johnson, who heads the Black Conservative Federation, calls Trump “the paycheck president.” He points to the former president’s criminal justice reforms, including the passage of the First Step Act as reasons why his support among Black conservatives remains strong. (Johnson says he is remaining neutral during the primary.) Trump’s pending indictment, coupled with the highly publicized federal raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida over classified documents, is evidence of injustice happening to the former president, according to Johnson. “The left wants to see President Trump in handcuffs. … They want to see a mugshot,” Johnson says, adding that the more Democrats go after Trump, the stronger his support among GOP voters — particularly among those of color — becomes. We’ll keep tabs and see how this all unfolds throughout the presidential primary. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | BIDEN’S FIRST VETO
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President Joe Biden speaks during a Monday event at the White House. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | He’s been in office more than two years, but he finally did it. President Joe Biden issued his first veto on Monday, effectively killing a Republican-backed bill that would repeal a rule established by the Labor Department permitting retirement investment be tethered to environmental and social and corporate governance factors, commonly referred to as ESG. In announcing his veto, Biden took shots at MAGA Republicans and singled out one of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). “This bill would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don't like,” Biden said. “Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not.” As my colleague Eleanor Mueller points out, Biden’s veto was not a surprise, as his administration had messaged against the legislation weeks before it ended up on his desk. Passage of the bill, though, was symbolic. For one, it gained bipartisan support, attracting two moderate Democrats up for reelection next year, Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Second, now that Biden prevented the bill from becoming law, it buoys Republicans' political messaging that this administration is in favor of so-called “woke” investing. This latest front in the culture wars came to the forefront earlier this month, when DeSantis and others blamed the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on the institution’s stances on sustainability and diversity. There does not appear to be enough votes to override Biden’s veto, which requires approval of two-thirds of both the House and the Senate.
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO
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| Check out our new 2024 interactive — We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the 2024 presidential contest, but we’re here with a handy guide on the basics: Who is in? Who is out? Who is still sitting on the fence? And what’s their path? Who is Alvin Bragg? — Earlier we mentioned Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney at the center of the likely indictment of Trump. POLITICO’s Erica Orden breaks down how this by-the-book prosecutor is on the verge of becoming the first prosecutor to ever bring criminal charges against an ex-president. Ted Lasso in the (White) House! — Watch as stars of the hit Apple TV soccer dramedy get serious about talking about mental health.
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| China’s Link to American Weed — POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig reports that while cartels in Mexico have long been involved in the illicit U.S. cannabis trade, Chinese investors are cropping up in this market too, from Oklahoma to the West Coast.
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| NCAA’s and NIL — As we’re in the thick of the NCAA’s March Madness tournament, Jackie Padilla, host of POLITICO’s Snapchat channel, explores how Charlie Baker, former Republican Massachusetts governor and now president of the NCAA, plans to regulate how student athletes get paid… or don’t.
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