MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Dismisses Trump Winning South Carolina Primary in Seconds: ‘These Numbers Are Disastrous’
All three major cable news networks projected Donald Trump as the winner in South Carolina’s GOP primary over Nikki Haley just seconds after polls closed on Saturday, but MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell dismissed the numbers as “disastrous” for the former president.
O’Donnell argued Trump should not be happy with the results in South Carolina while approximately a quarter of the primary votes had been counted, with the former president pulling about 57% to Haley’s 42% at the time.
“These numbers are disastrous for Donald Trump. Disastrous,” O’Donnell said.
He noted that President Joe Biden won 96% of the vote in his South Carolina primary, though those numbers were not entirely shocking since Biden is a sitting president with the full backing of the DNC against longshot challengers like Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN).
“These numbers are disastrous for Donald Trump. Disastrous. It’s the reason I mentioned the big forgotten number of South Carolina, which is Joe Biden getting 96%, okay? That’s what you’re supposed to get, alright, and Donald Trump’s not going to come close to that,” O’Donnell said.
He predicted Haley would pull around a third of the support in the primary and argued only a “sliver” of those Haley voters in each state needs to simply not vote for Trump in the general election, and it would majorly benefit Biden.
“We don’t know what the result of this election is tonight, but it’s going to be a very substantial number. It could be a third of the vote,” he said. “He’s going to leave that on the table, belonging to another candidate. All you need, all you need, is 5% of the 30%. We’re talking about a sliver.”
Rachel Maddow later called it “not a good look” for Trump to win South Carolina by approximately 20%. Stephanie Ruhle also declared Biden the “winner of the night,” a point Joe Reid also echoed. Reid recommended the Biden campaign do a “deep dive” on the voters choosing Haley over Trump, arguing they only need to win over a small percentage of them to spoil Trump’s chances.
CNN exit polls for the South Carolina primary showed only 45% of voters identified themselves as part of Trump’s MAGA movement, while 49% said they are not.
Watch above via MSNBC.
