The Daily Signal - #388: How Trump Backers View the President Now

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Building a wall on the southern border was President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledge -- and his supporters are serious about it. So how do Trump voters view the recent shutdown over wall funding? We talk to Anne Sorock of The Frontier Lab -- she’s got some interesting polling data that paints a helpful picture of where the president’s base is. Plus: We look at The Washington Post's media bias on abortion this week. We also cover these stories:•Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is speaking out against House Democrats' bill that "would make Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers."•Pennsylvania confirms that over 11,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in that state.•A California restaurant owner says he will refuse to serve any customer who’s wearing a MAGA hat.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal Podcasts for Friday, February 1st. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Building a wall on the southern border was President Trump's number one campaign pledge, and his supporters are serious about it. So, how do Trump voters view the recent shutdown over wall funding? We'll talk to Anne Sorok of the Frontier Lab. She's got some interesting polling data that paints a helpful picture of where the president's base is.

She'll unpack the details. Plus, we'll take a look at the media blackout over Virginia's radical abortion bill. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, with two weeks to go before government funding runs out, members of Congress are negotiating a package to fund the government and address border security. And President Trump is holding his ground. Here's what he said on Thursday morning in the Oval Office. As Nancy Pelosi said this morning, that there is not going to be a wall in this deal,

but she did say she'd be open to other kinds of physical barriers. Would you accept that? No, because if there's no wall, it doesn't work. just playing games. So if there's no wall, it doesn't work. And we're building the wall right now. I mean, a lot of people don't know that, but we have a lot of wall under construction. We've given out a lot of contracts over the last three, four weeks, good contracts. A lot of wall is soon going to be under construction. We will be, we're finishing up design on certain areas, the most important areas, the Rio Grande area and others. We are building a lot of wall.

You know, I'm not waiting for this committee. And I've told a lot of people, you know, I've told a lot of I don't expect much coming out of the committee because I keep hearing the words that we'll give you what you want but we're not going to give you a wall. And the problem is if they don't give us a wall, it doesn't work. Without a wall, it doesn't work. I have never in my life thought so much about what exactly constitutes a wall. But in other news, House Democrats have been pushing a bill called HR1.

While it's called the For the People Act, it has big implications. Among other things, it would make Election Day a holiday for government employees. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said per CNN, their bill would make Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers and create an additional brand new paid leave benefit for up to six days for any federal bureaucrat who decides they'd like to hang out at the polls during an election. McConnell added, just what America needs, another paid holiday and a bunch of government workers being paid to go out and work. Well, states are uncovering more and more non-citizens who are registered to vote in U.S. elections. This week, Pennsylvania confirmed that over 11,000 non-citizens were in fact registered to vote in that state. A top GOP lawmaker there called on the state to immediately expunge those names from the voter rolls, and he criticized the Democratic governor, Tom Wolfe, for dragging his feet and acknowledging the issue.

That news came just days after Texas announced that it found nearly 100,000 non-citizens who were registered. to vote. In a press conference Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to discuss comments. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, had made this week the suggested support for infanticide. There are pro-life Democrats in your group, considering the comments from Governor Northam yesterday, how does that make it harder for pro-life Democrats in the party? Does that cause problems? I'm sorry, I just don't know what he said yesterday. I just don't know. Are you going to ask a new question? Or is it this? Same old, same old.

So, one, I don't really believe that Pelosi hadn't heard this. I mean, she is obviously a news follower, and this was headline news. And secondly, this could have been so simple. She could have just said, I don't exactly know what Northern meant, but, you know, Democrats don't support infanticide. But she didn't do that. Well, one Bay Area restaurant owner is creating a stir after saying he refuses to serve any customer who's wearing a MAGA hat.

Jay Kenzie Lopez-Alt, the owner. of Worst Hall in San Mateo, California, took to Twitter earlier this week, saying, quote, it hasn't happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren't getting served, same as if you were wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate, end quote. Well, after sending that tweet, he acknowledged receiving negative and even threatening feedback, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. And it's not the first time that refusing service based on political belief has become a public issue. Last year, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia because of who she worked for.

And other Republican officials have been ambushed and harassed and heckled at restaurants, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and former head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt. So the Daily Signals Parent Organization, the Heritage Foundation, was once again ranked number one think tank when it comes to impact on public policy. That's according to a new report released by the University of Pennsylvania, the 2018 global go-to think-tank index. Rob Blewey, the Daily Signals editor-in-chief, spoke to James McGahn, director of the Thinktanks and Civil Society's program

at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania about his study. You know, people weren't, when I wrote the book 30 years ago, weren't interested in hearing about heritage. You know, they're lightweights, they won't be around. And the reality was, I saw a model, whether you agree with it or not, that was going to have sustained impact on policy. And part of it is the innovations, which were way ahead of the time,

in terms of what we are discussing today, 25 years later, in terms of the briefcase test, the Washington, Reagan International to Capitol Hill test, in terms of how do you design products, how do you engage policymakers, in a way that meets them where they are as opposed to where we want them to come to us. And that was a fundamental shift and an important shift. And that is the genius of the success of heritage and why it has become so influential. Next up we'll talk to Anne Sauruk, who has a pulse on where Trump voters are on government funding and the wall. Do you own an Alexa?

You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily, Flash Briefing. It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Well, we're about a week past the government shutdown, and a looming question of interest for the president is what does his base think? Here to discuss that in detail is Anne Sorok. She's president of the Frontier Lab, which recently conducted an extensive service. of Trump supporters about the shutdown and the border wall.

And thanks for being on. Thanks for having me. So, Ann, just your general take here, and you can get into the numbers as you like, how are President Trump's core voters, core base supporters responding to the government shutdown? Well, they are still with him today, and they were not happy about the shutdown, but they are not giving up hope that some of their goals, such as border security funds, are going to happen. So he's maintaining his support with them by a thread, but we're seeing that that's going to

drop off quite significantly if this does not happen. Not a wall in specific, but border security funds are integral to their support for him continuing. So on that, of course, Anne Colter, the pundit, who, supported Trump on immigration quite vigorously, shall we say, during the 2016 election, has been talking a lot about, you know, how he isn't getting it right now. She's often been seen as showing where the base is at. I mean, you just mentioned that you think they're not going to be satisfied if they can't get border security.

If it's not the wall, what does that look like to satisfy the base? Well, I think that what we have done work with the Trump base in the past, and what we are understanding from them is that what's most compelling about him as a brand or as a character that they supported was that he believes that America is good. And so from that flows many things, including securing what is good against what might dilute or hurt what is bad, what is good. So I think that for them, the wall is an example of the way he in general feels about America. So we saw that for them, for those who voted for Trump in the primary, while the wall or border security funds are important, it's not as important to them as to the more broadly speaking conservative base. So there was a difference there.

So that may look like enforcement of current laws, enforcement of the border as opposed to a physical barrier, which. although I think they do still want that, you do see a nuance in the difference between the type of grassroots supporter. In Washington, we've seen Democrats continue to hold out in opposition to any border wall funds. And as they've done that, the president has threatened to issue a national emergency on the border security issue. How do his supporters feel about a national emergency? This is an area where it was sort of an overwhelmingly supportive. We found 95% of those who voted for Trump in the 2016 election support declaring a national emergency to accomplish this. And a little bit higher for those who voted for him in the primary, 96%.

That number drops off a little bit when you took away those who voted for Trump in the primary, and you're just looking at other Republican primary voters, 91% support. declaring a national emergency. So that is sort of something that's universally supported by the grassroots base. And how did the voters that you hold feel about the shutdown? And what does that suggest they would feel if President Trump has it feels that he needs to shut the government down again? If he doesn't, if he and the Democrats can't reach a deal and he feels, you know, the Democrats won't compromise. We're going to have another government shutdown in mid-February. Did your research suggest anything about how people might respond to that?

Well, in terms of the most, the current situation that just ended, 60% of Trump voters did say they supported ending it. So that's sort of a moderate positive opinion. It's not overwhelming. I think they're waiting and holding their breath to see how this all turns out. They did not say they felt that President Trump was the victor in the situation. Only 43% said he won this sort of shut down showdown. So I think they don't know how to read what's happening. And I, you know, stepping away from the data, I would say that there's an opportunity for leadership and messaging about if this were to come to pass again, what it means to them.

Those numbers are so lukewarm to me that I think that what you're seeing is people, don't see that he's being a leader in this situation, they certainly do not see him as the victor. And they're open, I think, to finding another solution. And so that may mean supporting another shutdown as long as there's a message given to them. These are people who seem to not quite understand what the path forward is. Well, I also understand that your survey tracked views of the shutdown based on gender and Trump's support. How is his support? How is his support? holding out among men versus women? Well, that is interesting.

So we found quite a significant difference between the female Trump primary voters and the male Trump primary voters. So women, both of those groups are still supportive, highly supportive of the president. But what we were looking at, in addition to that, was how are they currently thinking just about the brand of republicanism? So we were interested to find that between those two groups, there was an almost 10-point difference higher for females in terms of saying they'll vote Republicans. So 85% of female primary voters will definitely be voting Republican versus 78% of males. And then that drops really far lower to 70%.

And the reason we're looking at that is to understand how is that brand currently works. for this grassroots. So sort of perhaps contrary to popular wisdom, it is the females, the women who are more attached to that Republican brand. We see that flow through again when we asked about how do they affiliate today. What label do they use? Again, 70% of female primary Trump voters today affiliate is Republican. That drops 10 points to 61% of male primary Trump voters and drops another 11 points to 52%, which is just a staggeringly low number of the grassroots Republican primary voters who didn't vote for Trump in the primary are affiliating today's Republican.

So there's a stark difference between females, males, and then the non-Trump primary voters that should be of interest to those who are shepherding the Republican brand. there's a concern that people are not using that label in the grassroots anymore. 52% as I said of non-Trump primary voters are affiliating today as Republicans. That means 48% are not. And we saw that most of the people who do not affiliate are saying that they affiliate as independent leaning right. So that's where they're going. But it is the women who are the most loyal and the women who are most likely to vote Republicans.

And so in terms of just gauging the health of the Republican brand, they should be looking to a bright spot in women. And they should also, you know, for a Trump voting, primary Trump voter to be a bright spot for republicanism versus other members of the Republican primary voting pool is, I think, would be a change in, suggest a change in strategy. to those who are against shepherding that Republican label, that this is where their future may be. And do you have any speculation on why women are more robustly Republican, are more loyal on this? I mean, one thing that immediately occurs to me is, of course, if you were a woman who voted for Trump and were public about that,

you no doubt faced some backlash and maybe having to defend it and argue for it, made you more a passionate supporter. But did you have any insights from your research? Well, you have hit it on the nose. That is exactly what we found. We did a comprehensive study of female supporters, high-intensity supporters of Trump just after the 2016 presidential. And one of the core aspects, you got it exactly right. These women had incurred some social capital damage in the days leading up to the election by expressing their support for Trump. They told us that it was hard for them in their social. circles, sometimes in their families, even. And then when they were validated by him having been elected against the odds of the pundits that the pundits said were there, against what their social circles said would happen, they had a sense of empowerment with regards to the political scene. So as you said, they have this very close feeling with him because together they sort of

navigated this swampy situation. And so there's that. There are a few other aspects we tracked in that initial study. One of them being that women actually related to his type of family. And it's interesting because a lot of the messaging thrown against him sort of attacked his values, but they actually set a positive for them was seeing his exemplary family, the he treated his children, I incorporated them into his work, was a big positive for them. So they're seeing that come through in his leadership to this day. And they have also, they appreciated at that time,

and I think still do, his ability to surround himself with a diversity of opinions. So they're seeing that he's working with people, perhaps unconventional. And that's a positive for them once again. So we see that everything that they liked him in him at that time has come through to bear, except for one thing. And I would say that's the Achilles' heel based on our research. And for women, that is that they believed all of these attributes of President Trump would result in a unified country. And so I'm looking to see, and we're going to be doing this polling under ear to the ground, which is the Frontier Labs polling arm, we are going to be. to be looking at how they're feeling about the unity or lack thereof of our country,

because we know that's part of what they're looking for in terms of their president's leadership. That's fascinating. It really cuts against the common narrative about women's views of the president. It's really fascinating. Last thing before we let you go, and what our audience doesn't know right now is that you're in the middle of a polar vortex calling us from Wisconsin. Are you holding out okay? Well, yes, we are. We're stocked up with food and gas, although we're not going anywhere. It's quite cold.

We got down to negative 50 with wind chill yesterday, which even for us, Wisconsin people, was a little bit beyond the pale, but we are not interested in hearing stories from East Coast people about how cold it is, that's for sure. Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. All right, well, Ann, thank you so much for calling in. The study is Ear to the Ground. You can check that out for in-depth numbers on the study.

And thanks for calling in. Thanks for having me. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. Each Tuesday in the Agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts.

Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. So it's been another great news cycle for the mainstream media. You might think that Virginia's new extreme abortion legislation, legislation that is completely out of step with where the American people are at, should generate some headlines, especially after a Democrat delegate admitted it would allow a mom in labor to abort her baby. But, of course, the media framed this not as Democrats want to kill babies, but Republicans attack Democrats.

For instance, our editor-in-chief Rob Bluie tweeted that the Washington Post, the huge local newspaper, didn't even mention the Virginia legislation for hours and hours after the delegate's comments were trending on Twitter. Then they published an article headlined, Abortion Bill draws GOP outrage against Virginia Governor Norther Democratic legislators. GOP outreach? Why is it GOP? outrage. Why isn't it about the actual bill? And then on Thursday, the Washington Post doubled

down publishing a story headlined until this week, Delegate Kathy Tran was known for nursing her daughter on the House floor. Now, Republicans are calling her a baby killer. I don't even know how to handle this. Republicans are calling her Delegate Tran said on an official hearing that her bill would allow a baby's life to be taken when the mom was in labor. So this is, you know, there's a saying on Twitter, conservative pounce. It sort of reflects that when the mainstream media often covers stories, instead of them being about the issues, they make it Republicans or conservatives are mad about this issue. And that's how this was being framed.

So Daniel, what were your thoughts? Yeah, I thought it was absolutely telling of just where the mainstream media is on this issue. I mean, you know, sometimes every now and then you get a really clear picture of what a journalist thinks about something because you see what they think the story is. The governor literally was defending selective infanticide on a local radio station after this bill had been introduced saying, yeah, you know, what will happen. And he was very, you know, soft and, you know, way of framing the issue. He was a former pediatrician. Yeah, yeah, very calm. Very calm.

Right. But it was just totally glossing over what was, what he was talking about, which is letting a, letting a baby die based on whether the mother and the doctor want to save it or not. And that's all that matters. And so, you know, that itself apparently is not the issue. The issue is people on the right, you know, right wing politicians exploding over this. I think, you know, a helpful thought experiment here is let's flip this around a little bit and think, what if you saw a news article that said, quote, religious freedom bill draws democratic outrage?

Like, what does that tell you about the issue? It doesn't tell you that the bill is, I mean, you would never expect to hear that from the left, right? That is not, that's not how they operate. It's just religious freedom bill outrageous against LGBT people or something. If outrage is the story, then it's inappropriate outrage. Right. And I think it's, you know, it's one of these things that media, bias. It comes through in so many different ways. And I think it's also, you know, the context they choose. I certainly didn't read all the stories if they existed at all on Virginia and New York's bills. But, you know, one of them was telling things that I was thinking about is, of course, the media is very concerned about climate change. And you read about climate change and you're

always hearing about, you know, European countries and their standards. I wonder if any mainstream media coverage of these Virginia or New York bills included the information that only seven countries in the world allow this. You know, we are one of seven, they include North Korea and China. Most European, if not all European countries, don't allow this. And I think between that, between making this about Republican outrage, and, you know, again, this is not unpopular. The Knights of Columbus Maris poll that we've been referencing lately showed, I think, 70 to 75%

of Americans want abortion basically illegal after the first trimester. That two, three quarters of the country. Right. But instead of being like, oh, this thing that we have bipartisanship on, we have agreement on, this thing that almost all Americans see eye to eye on, Democrats are trying to take down, it's like, oh, Republicans are upset. Well, it just shows that a lot of these media institutions do not represent the country on these issues. Yeah. They don't. I mean, they just, they represent a tiny sliver of, you know, coastal elite who are completely separated from the country.

and, you know, pro-life views, they just can't, they can't abide. Right. And you really wonder, is anyone in these newsrooms a pro-lifer or even someone who is familiar with pro-life arguments? Is anyone saying, hey, I think it should be okay. But, you know, we do have preemies that are living as early as 24 weeks, right? I think even in one case, 22 weeks. Maybe it makes sense that they think this is, you know, akin to murdering a child. Maybe we should think about this. Right.

And, you know, I, you know, it's sort of ridiculous to reduce everything back to World War II and Hitler. But, I mean, to me, all I could think was would you say something like polls outraged over Hitler's concentration camps? Yeah. I mean, what they're going to keep doing is they're going to keep suppressing the majority opinions, suppressing it, suppressing it, just like they did with Trump when he was running, ignoring the fact that he had a real shot to win. and then when he won, they were completely blindsided by their own making, right? I mean, it was self-inflicted. And, you know, I could see that happening on this, you know, abort maybe, you know, what if a state, like, you know, decides to get rid of abortion altogether or if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Those are real possibilities that are backed by large segments of the country, but they just don't get a hearing in the Washington Post.

Well, and also it's what are they asking politicians? Like, you can bet if a politician is pro-life that he will be asked about cases of rape, of incest, of the mother's life, all those hard cases. He will be asked, you know, what would you say to a woman? How dare you keep a woman pregnant for nine months? You know, he'll be asked tough questions. But if there is a man who is in favor of abortion until birth, hopefully they stop then. You know, no one's going to say, like, don't you think it's weird? that, you know, a child who could survive on their own is allowed to be legally killed.

That's not a question that they ever get asked. Or, again, weird that country, only a handful of countries, like, including North Korea and China, have abortion policies as radical as ours. Right. Why are you comfortable with that? International norms. And those questions don't get asked. And, you know, I actually thought one of the most exciting moments in the 2016 campaign,

and I don't remember which debate, but President Trump actually did. did a great statement where he made some comment about, you know, the Democrats' extreme support for abortion up through the ninth month. And I bet that was the first time that a lot of people had thought about that. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, credit to the president at the time when he was debating Hillary Clinton, you know, talking very viscerally about what she supports, you know, ripping babies and that kind of stuff. And he said it again in a recent interview with The Daily Caller. He brought that up again. And, you know, kudos to him for that. Great. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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