Donald Trump said that he would be perfectly willing to vote for a gay candidate for president.
Rivera, who said that he’s a friend of Trump several times in the softball interview, asked Trump on his Roadkill with Geraldo podcast yesterday, “Would Americans vote for a gay man to be president?”
Related: Only half of voters are ‘ready’ for a gay president according to new polling
“I think so,” Trump replied. “I think there would be some that wouldn’t, and you know, I wouldn’t be among that group, to be honest with you.”
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He said that homophobia “doesn’t seem to be hurting Pete Buttigieg.”
“There would certainly be a group, you know this better than I do, there’d be a group that probably wouldn’t, but you and I would not be in that group,” Trump said.
“We would not,” Rivera replied.
In a June 2019 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 34% of Americans said they would be less likely to vote for a gay candidate. A 2015 Gallup Poll found that 74% of Americans said they would vote for a gay presidential candidate.
But the latter poll shows that those numbers don’t tell the entire story. In that same Gallup Poll, 92% of people said that they would vote for a black person or a woman, even though there has never been a female U.S. president.
Hypothetical questions about voting for an LGBTQ candidate or a black candidate or a woman put identity in a vacuum, ignoring barriers that women and minority candidates face like increased voter scrutiny, differing media coverage, and institutional barriers within the Democratic and Republican parties.
