Eric Trump Puts the Spotlight on Trump's Huge Primary Turnout - 'Never Seen Numbers Like This'
With the mainstream media focused relentlessly on the contest between Democratic presidential hopefuls, American voters might be missing an even bigger story in the primary season so far:
The voter turnout for President Donald Trump in a series of essentially unopposed contests indicates Trump supporters are ready to turn out in force to keep the president in office when the November election rolls around.
Across the country, Trump backers have been showing up at the polls even when there was almost no reason to vote except the desire to show support for the incumbent president, the president’s second son Eric Trump said on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday. And they’re making their message known.
.@EricTrump reacts on @FoxandFriends to voters turning out in big numbers to support the president. https://t.co/7hhJk8rwDw
— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) March 11, 2020
“We’re seeing this across the country,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” crew. “The turnout … He’s not running against anybody. The turnout for a guy who was the incumbent. We’ve never seen numbers like this.”
It’s not strictly true to say Trump isn’t running against anybody. In all but four of the 21 states that have conducted a Republican primary or caucus this year, Trump has faced token opposition – the biggest name being former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld.
However, not even the most feverishly fantasizing NeverTrumper would consider Weld a serious threat to Trump’s winning the Republican nomination, so Trump supporters aren’t turning out because they think every vote will count toward putting the president at the top of the GOP ballot in November.
But they clearly think every vote will count – especially their own – when it comes to showing support for a president who has faced nothing but bitter opposition from not just his political foes but the mainstream media, the entertainment-industrial complex and the so-called intelligentsia of academia.
And they’re turning out to show their support, as state-by-state breakdowns by USA Today for Republican and Democratic primaries show.
In Alabama on Super Tuesday, for instance, Trump brought in more votes than all the Democratic contenders combined (695,469 for Trump, 444,407 all Democrats).
“And it wasn’t close,” AL.com reported. “Trump got 60 percent of all votes cast for any presidential candidate in Alabama.”
In Washington state a week later, the president had 523,504 votes, according to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office. That’s more than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was winning the Democratic contest with 335,561, the secretary of state’s office reported.
On “Fox & Friends” Wednesday, Eric Trump had a simple explanation for why so many voters are turning out for Trump when there’s no practical reason to go to the trouble for a primary contest that’s already decided, for all intents and purposes.
“People are p—ed off at government, right?” he said. “They don’t like these other candidates at all. My father’s bringing back the pride of this nation.
“Everything he’s doing is American. It’s patriotic. People finally feel like they have a voice again. And that’s why people are turning out in record numbers, even when they don’t have to.
“It’s incredible. It truly is a movement.”
There’s no denying that the numbers are heartening to any American who wants to see Trump in office for another four years – or just for any sane American who sees the prospect of either Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden in the Oval Office as the horror it would be.
But there’s also no denying that Trump is going to need every voter who turned out for the primaries to turn out for the general – plus many, many more.
It’s a rock-solid bet that the mainstream media and cultural forces are going to be shoulder-to-shoulder in support of the Democratic nominee, whether it’s Biden (as seems likely) or Sanders, or the ghost of Charles Manson.
The Democratic primary contest is sucking up all the attention now, but the main event is still waiting.
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