Meet the voters jumping off the Donald Trump train
Meet the voters jumping off the Donald Trump train
WASHINGTON—Last week, David Wright decided that his candidate was a “moron.”
Wright, an optical technician and “Reagan Republican” in Tennessee, had been willing to ignore a certain amount of foolishness from party nominee Donald Trump. But when Trump suggested that gun owners might assassinate Hillary Clinton, Wright came to a new conclusion: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
“That comment: that was it. There’s some things you just don’t say,” said Wright, 44, now an undecided voter. “There’s just a certain amount of etiquette, certain decorum that has to come into this thing.”
Trump said during the Republican primary that he could shoot someone on the street and “not lose voters” and he seemed to be exaggerating only slightly. He was gaffe proof, Teflon Don, leader of a political cult whose hypnotized admirers would love him no matter what he did.
No longer. Not even close.
His campaign rallies are as crowded and raucous as ever. Polling data and interviews, though, suggest that a small but important minority of former devotees is abandoning him over new qualms about his character, temperament and judgment.
“I live in the country and I think I want to make one of those bunkers like they used to when we were afraid of nuclear war. Because every time he opens his mouth, I feel like he’s putting us at risk,” said Kimberly McBride, 45, of Louisiana. “I think he’s going to get us all killed.”
McBride, a former teacher with health challenges, is struggling to pay her mortgage and she was drawn to Trump’s economic message. She was aghast, though, when he invited Russian hackers in late July to obtain Clinton’s emails. When he then insulted the Muslim parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, she broke with her husband and flipped to Clinton.
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