Macomb County GOP Chair Talks Trump Support, Accomplishments

The Republican National Convention has begun and Michigan is still very much considered a battleground state for the upcoming presidential election.

In 2016, Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 11,000 votes. He got strong support from West Michigan and also Macomb County.

“Even if you don’t like the personality, you’d stop and look at results and say, ‘You know what, this guy, he’s doing a good job.” — Mark Forton, Macomb County GOP

The Chairman of the Macomb County Republican Party, Mark Forton, says he still sees lots of support for the president in his county.

Listen: Macomb County Republican Chair Mark Forton on President Trump and the 2020 election.

Editor’s note: Some of the views expressed might once have been considered on the fringes of Republican politics but now represent more mainstream Conservative thinking. Many of the same themes are being echoed in the Republican National Convention.

“You go on the corner of a highway with a dozen people waving Trump flags and American flags and the horn honking and the carrying-on, you would not believe!” says Forton.

Forton says, once Trump took office, he immediately got to work. “It was incredible the changes,” he says.

“All these things that have been gone for 30 years, going and going and going, they’re all coming back.” — Mark Forton, Macomb County GOP

Forton credits the president with bringing manufacturing jobs and factories back to America, like a new Fiat Chrysler plant in Detroit.

“All these things that have been gone for 30 years, going and going and going, they’re all coming back. And that’s real jobs,” says Forton, a decades-long United Auto Worker member.

Forton responded to Republicans, Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, announcing separately that they will not vote for President Trump.

“People like Kasich and Flake, I’ll tell you what, they were never Republicans,” says Forton. “I mean, you would think if you believed in the platform, you would stop and think after a while, even if you don’t like the personality, you’d stop and look at results and say, ‘You know what, this guy, he’s doing a good job. I think he’s a rat but he’s doing a good job.’”

Kasich confirmed in a recent CNN interview that he is a Republican. Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake said in his endorsement of Joe Biden, “I was a Republican long before the president ever called himself one, and I will be a Republican long after identifying as such is no longer useful to him.”