(DCNF)—Two young pro-choice women on Tuesday said they favor former President Donald Trump because of the media’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and their subsequent distrust of the institution.
Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris by 16 points among men, while Harris holds a 16-point advantage among women across all the battleground states, according to a Sunday New York Times/Siena College poll. The voters, featured on journalist Mark Halperin’s “The Morning Meeting,” expressed surprise at backing Trump, saying they no longer trust the media’s portrayal of him.
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“I can’t believe I’m voting for Trump,” a law school student named Lauren said, telling Halperin she has only voted for Democrats in past elections. “It started with COVID things … For me, this election is like a referendum on the elites way more than it is anything about Trump or Harris. specifically. And I recognize, like I live in D.C., I’m about to be a lawyer. It doesn’t matter.”
“After years of being yelled at about misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories, and after, like, for this past, year actually doing my research on what Trump did, not just what he said, but what he did in his first term and realizing the media’s lies and then seeing the media’s lies this past year, I mean the amount of work that you have to do as someone who’s not surrounded by a conservative bubble to actually figure out like the nuanced truth of what’s going on is insane,” she added.
Lauren also said she is backing Trump because of Israel, criticizing Harris and President Joe Biden for their handling of antisemitism. She also said she was “really inspired” by the team Trump has assembled during his 2024 campaign.
Halperin asked Lauren later if she is “pro-choice” and she said she was, but added she favors “keeping abortion to the states,” which Trump supports.
“I feel like a lot of his positions are pretty moderate and I think that moderate positions are best for the country right now,” she added.
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“I think I’m supporting Trump, which is crazy for me. I very much resonate with what Lauren said earlier,” a California voter named Megan said, adding that the people she knows who are around her age of mid-twenties to early thirties appear to be supporting Trump.
“I think that COVID had a huge impact on how I view the media … it really led me to question a lot of what the media was saying, which sort of, you know, led me to look into a lot of other things. And I sort of had always bought into the media narrative around Trump, which I now disagree with,” she added. “I don’t agree with Trump on a lot of things and I’m very pro-choice, but there are certain issues that I really think that he is right on about.”
