Beaufort, S.C.
Did Donald Trump damage his candidacy at Saturday night’s debate when he alleged that George W. Bush knowingly lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to launch the war? A few signs suggest the answer is yes.
On Monday, Rush Limbaugh lumped Trump in the same league as Michael Moore and Daily Kos bloggers for standing by his Iraq war conspiracy theory. Then on Tuesday, CNN released a poll that found Trump dropped 9 points after the debate—from 40 percent to 31 percent. On Tuesday night, every voter I spoke to at Trump’s campaign event in Beaufort, South Carolina disapproved of Trump’s comments. Their views ranged from genuine disgust to mere displeasure.
Dave Paxton from Hilton Head said he still doesn’t know who he’s voting for on Tuesday, but he is certain he won’t be voting for Trump. Paxton said Trump’s comment about George W. Bush “was horrible. I couldn’t hardly watch after that. I mean, really, I was hoping they would not even ask him another question.”
“I just think he made an ass of himself,” Paxton added. “And then he kept interrupting.”
On the ride over to Trump’s event, Paxton said, his girlfriend and another friend who support Trump brought up the Iraq debate remark and both agreed that it was embarrassing. “I think it hurt him a lot. We’ll see come Saturday,” Paxton said.
“He just recently got crossed off my list,” Michele Williams of Okatie, South Carolina said of Trump. Williams hadn’t liked Trump’s bullying behavior for some time, but it was “the debate that was the nail in the coffin.”
“The thing about ‘Bush lied’—that makes me question his conservatism. I don’t trust him any more. I really don’t. I don’t respect him,” said Williams, who has narrowed her choices down to Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. “Definitely voting in the primary, but I’m as confused as ever,” she said about her vote.
Williams’s mother, Pearl Compaan, agreed that the Iraq war was probably a mistake in hindsight, but she was still appalled by Trump’s accusation that Bush led the country into war with deliberate lies. “That just rocked me back,” Compaan said. “To say it was a mistake, I think there are a lot of us that think in retrospect it was probably a mistake. But I do not think that Bush intentionally lied about weapons of mass destruction.”
And that’s the rub. Trump didn’t merely suggest the war was a mistake. Debate moderator John Dickerson pointed out that Trump said in 2008 that George W. Bush should be impeached because “he lied, he got us into the war with lies.” When asked Saturday if he still believed Bush should have been impeached, Trump replied: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”
In Michele Williams’s opinion, Trump’s baseless claim hasn’t shaken his core supporters. “It seems like a lot of people that I know that like Trump, I would consider them smart, successful, reasonable, intelligent people. They are devout Trump followers,” she said. “I don’t think they’re rattled at all.”
Indeed, I spoke to several voters who didn’t like what Trump said at the debate but were still supporting or at least considering voting for him anyway.
Lisa Clancy, an elementary charter school teacher from Beaufort, said that she was still trying to decide between voting for Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. “I know he would get things done,” Clancy said of Trump. “I like everything about him,” she said of Rubio, but she’s worried the Florida senator doesn’t have “as much experience” as Trump.
What did she think about Trump’s comments about George W. Bush and the Iraq war? “It made me angry,” she replied. “It’s wrong. That’s what bothers me about him. And he’s making this big thing about 9/11. Seriously? He could have prevented it? No.”
Still, Clancy said Trump’s remark wasn’t a dealbreaker for her “because I know that where we are as a country is in a dangerous place, economically.”
“He’s a doer,” she added.
“I didn’t like that at all,” T.J. Johnson of Spring Island said of Trump’s Iraq war comment. But Johnson said he’s still certain to vote for Trump: “Very simple: the sewer in Washington. The political system is broke. They need a major overhaul,” he explained.
“It was one of those things where you sit there and say, ‘Did you have to say that?'” said Gene Rascle of St. Helena Island. He arrived at Trump’s rally somewhat undecided between Ted Cruz and Trump, but left the rally certain to vote for Trump. Rascle said he was “totally impressed” with Trump, who did not come across the “way the media’s been trying to make him.”
Art Morrow, a 92-year-old retiree from St. Helena Island, said he showed up to Trump’s rally leaning toward Marco Rubio. “I think I’m about to switch over to Trump,” Morrow said as he was walking to his car. “He’s very convincing. He could be a winner. He looks like a winner. He acts like a winner. So, why not vote for a winner?”
Trump’s poll numbers do indicate that he’s heading toward another win in South Carolina, despite his rocky debate performance last Saturday. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump leads Ted Cruz by 17.5 percentage points in South Carolina. Even if the debate hurt him, Trump has built up a big enough lead that it will be difficult for anyone else to overtake him in South Carolina.
But plenty of voters are still making up their minds, and the final result could be much closer than many expect. With the candidates dedicating most of their time to Iowa and New Hampshire until this week, many South Carolina voters are only now getting a chance to see the candidates up close.
Janie Johnson of Okatie told me she had just decided to vote for Ted Cruz after seeing him at church on Sunday. “I believe our land needs to be healed,” said Johnson. “I believe that Ted Cruz will uphold the constitution. He’s not afraid to fight Washington for those conservative values. Donald Trump is not conservative enough for me.”
Fran Calvert of Beaufort said she had been a Carson supporter but recently came to the conclusion that “Carson is not a viable candidate now.” After watching Marco Rubio speak for the first time Tuesday morning, she’s strongly leaning toward voting for the Florida senator.
“I saw Rubio this morning. I didn’t know anything about him, and he was impressive. He was not scripted, he was not overly-passionate, he had real solutions,” she said. “I hadn’t really paid attention at all because he doesn’t look presidential, which is ridiculous.”
“In my opinion, Trump is a lot of bravado without specifics,” Calvert said. She still showed up to the Trump rally Tuesday night because she wanted to hear what he had to say. “This is our football,” she said. “We love politics.”
