Comment on Trump pushing away young Republicans

WASHINGTON — When President Trump refused to explicitly blame white supremacists for violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Republican Emmanuel Wilder couldn’t help but take it personally. “I try not to let my feelings get ahead of the facts, but in this circumstance, it hurts,” the 30-year-old Wilder, a North Carolina-based African-American involved in Republican outreach efforts, told McClatchy at the time. Five months later, it’s Trump’s Republican Party that is hurting – with young voters, and significantly, with young Republicans like Wilder, who may like Trump’s tax plan but are deeply bothered by his routinely divisive tone. As the Trump presidency hits the one-year mark, the Republican Party confronts a yawning generational gap that has been exacerbated in recent months by Trump’s incendiary comments on race-related issues and the party’s official support for an accused child molester in Alabama’s Senate race. Now, as few as a quarter of voters under the age of 30 approve of Trump’s job performance.