(p. A20) WASHINGTON — Alice Marie Johnson was watching the Super Bowl with two of her sisters on Sunday night [Feb. 2, 2020] when she saw her own face in an advertisement amid the commercials for Doritos and Audis.
Ms. Johnson was serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison for a nonviolent drug conviction when the president commuted her sentence in 2018. The reality television star Kim Kardashian West had discovered Ms. Johnson’s story on social media and personally appealed to him on her behalf.
And now the 64-year-old African-American woman was the star of the Trump campaign’s multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad, . . .
. . .
“I’ve been such a source of pride for him,” she said. “Who doesn’t want to show something they’re proud of during an election year? That’s what all the candidates do. For him to highlight me, it makes me know he’s not only proud, he’s super proud.”
She described herself as “not an expert in politics” but someone fighting for “anything that advances my cause, anything that advances my cause of bringing people home.”
Ms. Johnson would not say whether she would vote for Mr. Trump if she could. “I can’t vote, and that’s part of what I’m fighting for,” she said. But as for criticizing Mr. Trump, she said that was simply out of the question for her.
“Can you imagine turning on someone who saves your life?” she said. “Just on a personal level, can you imagine?”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 6, 2020, and the title “What It’s Like to Be the Face of Trump’s Super Bowl Ad.”)