‘The magic is racism’: Obama vet fires back at Lindsey Graham’s gushing Trump description

Obama pollster says Trump’s ‘magic’ is ‘racism’ and that Republican Party is smaller tent now than when George W Bush left White House

Obama campaign alum Cornel Belcher has slammed comments Lindsey Graham made to Axios last week in which the South Carolina Senator said there’s something “magic” about former president Donald Trump.

Mr Graham acknowledged that the former president has a “dark side” but that Mr Graham keeps working with him only because he wants to “harness the magic” of Mr Trump.

“The magic is racism,” Mr Belcher said on MSNBC when asked to respond to Mr Graham’s comments. The founder and president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies, a polling firm that was essential in the electoral victories of Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, added that “the magic is that the Republican brand is worse off now than it was when George Bush left it”.

In an interview with Axios last week, Mr Graham compared the electoral failure of the 2012 and 2008 Republican presidential nominees to the 2016 election success of Donald Trump: “Mitt Romney didn’t do it. John McCain didn’t do it. There’s something about Trump. There’s a dark side and there’s some magic there. And what I’m trying to do is just harness the magic.”

Mr Graham added that Mr Trump could “make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know could make it. He could make it bigger, he could make it stronger. He could make it more diverse and he also could destroy it”.

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Referring to the Republican Party after the end of the presidency of George W Bush, Mr Belcher told MSNBC: “Certainly you had a bigger tent party... than it is right now. You got someone who’s defeated as a sitting president. Joe Biden garnered more votes than anyone has in defeating [Mr Trump]. They lost the Senate and they lost the House. The kind of magic that he’s sprinkling around... if you’re a Democrat you gotta like it and the more that he’s the face of the party I think the harder it becomes to win back those suburban women that they desperately need to win back.”

The widow of John McCain, the Arizona Senator who was Mr Graham’s closest friend in the Senate, told MSNBC on Monday: “Right now, there’s too much anger and hate, and that’s been generated from the top. I just don’t believe that our party can survive by appealing to the dark side of humanity. I’ve seen it too often. I began this quest in my life with Ronald Reagan, and I just don’t see how... we got to where we’re at, but now that we’re here, we can no longer have our leaders work with fear and anger and hate.”