‘This is not going to stop’: Some Pa. Trump supporters are tired and looking for alternatives

Rich Pruett has supported former President Donald Trump since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy in the Republican primary. He’s arranged meet-ups and fundraisers and attended parties and rallies all over Pennsylvania.

And he’s defended the former president at every turn.

Over the weekend, though, as TV news stations ran nonstop coverage of the federal indictment against Trump, Pruett felt himself drifting.

“It’s been too much, too often,” said Pruett, who lives in Drexel Hill and works in insurance. “I think I’ve come to the realization that this is not going to stop.”

Pruett sees the prosecution as wholly politically motivated, but it has still worn down his allegiance to Trump. He’s now interested in South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott becoming the nominee.

He is not alone.

As the unprecedented federal case against a former president unfolds, some Trump supporters in Pennsylvania are backing away from him, either doubtful of his electability or weary of the negative attention he attracts.

“I think that smart people will have to come to this realization that, hey, it was great for four years. We can do it again, but he’s just not the guy to be sitting in the chair,” Pruett said.

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Most polls show Trump still maintains loyal support from about one-third of the GOP, and he leads by a wide margin in early primary state surveys. In a crowded field, that core group of supporters could be enough to deliver him the nomination. Even voters who are cooling on the idea of him as the nominee say they’d back him in a general election — but they worry about his chances of winning Pennsylvania, a key swing state that Trump lost by a close margin in 2020.

The last time Trump was indicted, his poll numbers briefly spiked, as some voters rushed to his defense. After this second indictment, an ABC poll found nearly equal percentages of Americans believed that Trump should have been charged in the case and that the charges against him were politically motivated.

“There’s a lot of people who, on the surface, they will say they like Trump,” said Jeff Piccola, the former GOP chair in York County. “They will say this is all terrible about what they’re doing to him, but in their heart of hearts, they wish he would go away or someone else would surface to get the nomination.”

Piccola described himself as a “die-hard” Trump supporter until 2021, when he became so frustrated with Trump endorsing GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano that he resigned his position as county chair.

For Piccola, a lawyer, the indictment adds to his conviction that Trump isn’t helping the party anymore.

“He could have avoided all this if he just gave the documents back to them,” Piccola said. “It’s not like he needed them for anything. He’s hurting our party, and I just think he’s very, very selfish and egocentric.”

After the 2022 midterms, Trump lost favor with a lot of Republicans in Pennsylvania who blamed him for losses in the state. One of Trump’s earliest 2016 supporters, former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, was passed over by Trump for an endorsement in the governor’s race and is now an early backer of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I think he has the best chance of winning in the general election,” Barletta said of DeSantis in a recent interview. “He’s young, he’s energetic, he’s raising a family, so I think people can see someone who understands what they’re experiencing.”

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For some, the indictment isn’t why they’re distancing from Trump — but it’s another thing they fear will turn off other voters.

Glen Beiler Jr., a 64-year-old FedEx courier from Ephrata, is a two-time Trump supporter who now leans toward DeSantis.

Beiler worries about the former president’s ability to win suburban and independent voters. He thinks DeSantis’ relative youth — he’s 44 — is an asset. Trump turned 77 this week. Biden is 80.

He also thinks for all the political energy Trump inspired, there’s some fatigue as voters look ahead to a possible rematch.

“It’s kind of like, for years we had the Clintons and the Bushes,” Beiler said. “People were just tired of the kind of same old and wanted something new.”

But if Trump is the nominee, he will fully support him.

“What’s going on doesn’t change my opinion of what he can do,” Beiler said. “He won it before and, despite what people are saying, I think he could win it again.”

Pennsylvania is currently scheduled to vote in the presidential primary April 23. The date will likely change, but it’s late enough in the primary calendar that voters here could go to the polls after the nomination is already settled.

Seven months before the first primary votes are cast, Trump is leading big in states where early momentum is key.

Outside former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential announcement in New Hampshire last week, a group of Trump loyalists waved flags and held up signs.

Anthony Boucher, a 47-year-old electrician, said he was “not worried in the slightest” about the charges against Trump in New York, where he was arraigned April 4 in a hush-money case, or the possibility of more.

“There’s more support for Trump than people even think,” Boucher said. “He’s the only one that can fix what’s going on in the country right now. He knows how bad the swamp is and how deep it is and what the swamp’s like.”

Terry Christopher, a former GOP chairman in Lancaster Township who now lives near Reading, said a lot of Pennsylvania voters feel similarly. The federal indictment doesn’t impact Christopher’s support for the former president.

“I am not a cultist. I see flaws in Donald Trump. It’s not like I like every single thing,” Christopher said. “But of all the reasons I would have to lose support for him, the Biden Justice Department isn’t gonna sway me.”

Christopher, along with every voter interviewed for this article, questioned the fairness of the proceedings in light of what he considered a missed opportunity to hold other politicians accountable, like President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Biden aides found classified documents at his home and former office and Clinton was accused of mishandling classified intelligence in emails, but neither was accused of intentionally moving classified documents or information or of trying to conceal them. According to the indictment, Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after the National Archives sought their return, and tried to hide them from federal investigators.

Christopher, 49, works in advertising and said he’s taken a serious look at some of the other GOP candidates and walked away uninspired.

“I’ve looked for excuses not to support Donald Trump,” Christopher said. “And then I hear him talk and I see him, and it brings back those old feelings of someone who’s willing to stand up to the people who don’t like me and fight on my behalf. … He is the only person who makes me feel that way.”

Staff writers Chris Brennan and Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.