Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics recently ran a focus group with a small number of South Carolina Republicans who remain undecided in the primary. Several of the voters seem open to the idea of supporting Donald Trump, but much of the room tells Halperin they are “troubled” by their collective view that Trump is insincere about being faithful and religious.
Then, Halperin shows the group a few short clips of Trump at his campaign rallies using profanity. “He gets the nomination, they’re going to sue his ass up,” Trump says in the clips. “Knock the shit out of ISIS….And you can tell them to go f––– themselves.”
The final quotation (in which Trump mouths or whispers the offending four-letter word) gets the biggest reaction from the focus group, and it’s completely negative. One woman watching puts her face in her hands. “Oh my goodness,” says a group participant. “Wow,” say several others.
“It’s crass,” says one woman. “It’s not how you want your president of the United States to present.”
“It’s unprofessional,” says another woman. Several participants cross their arms.
Watch the video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday:
Halperin then asks the group if Trump’s use of profanity is likely to hurt him more among South Carolina primary voters than it did in Iowa or New Hampshire. How this small group of undecided voters are supposed to compare themselves to voters in those other states isn’t clear. But the respondents are quick to answer anyway.
“In the Bible Belt?” one man says, nodding his head.
“We don’t tolerate that here,” says a woman.
The Halperin focus group did not see or comment on another recent vulgar moment from Trump, in which he repeated an audience member’s declaration that GOP rival Ted Cruz was a “pussy.”
Will Trump’s vulgarity have any effect on his poll numbers in South Carolina? In Halperin’s construction, it didn’t hurt him as much in Iowa or New Hampshire, and there’s no reason to believe South Carolinians are particularly prudish about foul language. But the reactions of his focus group suggest a lot of undecided Republican voters aren’t even familiar with his willingness to curse at public campaign events. To actually hurt Trump, it will take a rival campaign putting resources behind an effort to ask South Carolina Republicans and those in the remaining states if they want a president who “presents” in the vulgar way Trump often does.
