Matt Gaetz says Trump doesn’t need women voters because ‘there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready’

‘This is the blue-collar realignment of the Republican Party,’ Florida congressman says after Trump blowout in Iowa

Matt Gaetz has argued that the demographic changes between the parties will help former President Donald Trump get back to the White House.

The Florida congressman who incited the ouster of former GOP speaker Kevin McCarthy appeared to suggest on Newsmax on Wednesday that as white women leave the Republican Party under the leadership of Mr Trump, they will be replaced by Latino and Black men moving towards the GOP.

Referencing Mr Trump’s overwhelming victory in the Iowa Caucuses on Monday night, Mr Gaetz said: “There is a relentlessness and a persistence in the Trump campaign that I think really emerges out of the candidate himself.”

“In Iowa, this victory was so huge and really it was a testament to the resiliency of the Trump voter,” he added. “Because you had the worst conditions possible, historically, challenging weather and ice and these folks came out and voted overwhelmingly for the president.”

“I've met with a lot of those folks. This is the blue-collar realignment of the Republican Party. And what I can tell you is for every Karen we lose, there's a there's a Julio and Jamal ready to sign up for the Mega movement,” Mr Gaetz claimed. “And that bodes well for our ability to be more diverse and to be more durable as we head into not only the rest of the primary contests but also the general election.”

The name Karen has been used to describe suburban middle-class white women who are perceived as entitled in a derogatory way, while Julio and Jamal are stereotypical names for Latino and Black men, respectively.

After the 2012 election and Mitt Romney’s loss to then-president Barack Obama, the Republican Party recommended that a more inclusive tone be adopted towards minorities – something Mr Trump absolutely demolished when he rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his White House campaign, calling Mexican immigrants “rapists”.

But the result of Mr Trump’s presidency and subsequent third presidential campaign appears to be a divide along educational lines, not racial ones, as those with college degrees move towards the Democratic Party and those without higher education more often backing Republicans.

Several polls last year showed Mr Trump doing well with Black and Hispanic voters, helping him surge ahead of President Joe Biden in head-to-head matchups.

Mr Trump averaged 20 per cent with Black voters and 42 per cent with Hispanic voters “across five high-quality polls,” The Washington Post noted in September.

In 2020, Mr Trump won only eight per cent of Black voters and 36 per cent of Hispanic voters, according to the Pew Research Center.