Why I travelled from Ardfinnan to America to vote for Trump

The US working classes have had enough of greedy neo-liberalists who have sowed disunity for too long, writes Bridget McIntyre

IVOTED for Donald Trump. My journey from Shannon to America last Monday morning was to do just that. I cut my return trip to the US tight as my husband had recently broken his shoulder in Ireland and his recovery was slow. But, shoulder pain aside, we were not about to forgo our opportunity to put Trump right where he belongs — in the White House.

In the stark, cold dawn of Ardfinnan, Co Tipperary, my husband’s niece, Saidhbh Sweeney, bundled us and our luggage into her tiny car and transported us to Shannon Airport.

But the journey to that vote was not all about the miles. It took 40 years of living and working, mostly as a trauma nurse, in America. I worked beside whites, blacks and Latinos, as friends and colleagues, witnessing the decline of America for the ordinary working man and woman.

Indeed, I witnessed that decline at the bedsides of my patients. Back in the 1970s, most of them could sustain a family of five or six with their salary.

But in the 2000s they were working two or three low-paid jobs and were still unable to afford their mortgage payments. Furthermore, I was seeing more sick, young people in the hospitals due to stress, burnout and the resulting family breakdown.

Nursing the sick and wounded for that long span of time in the major hospitals of America, and walking the hospital corridors at dawn and in the dead of night, brought me literally into the hearts and minds of Americans.

I can still smell the mass of humanity in the hospital rooms. So I feel duty-bound, with the authority of experience, to state both the Democratic and Republican parties have not served the people of America well.

Enter Trump. Trump had the compassion and intelligence to find out for himself who was hurting in America. This revelation was a journey for him, too. But it was a journey he took alone and in turn fielded the heavy, low blows from the right and left of the political spectrum along the way, throughout his long campaign.

He hit back at the manipulative enemies of the people, and, yes, we saw some collateral damage.

But the lazy media sold out the public they are there to serve. They sold to the highest bidder to stay close to their paymasters and refused to analyse the unfolding drama. The drama is that the liberal elite is steering America down a dark path of societal and racial divisions in order to further an ideological vision.

No matter the price, this elite fakes grievous insult over pushbacks about genderless bathrooms while ignoring the collapse of the American family and the cost of that to society.

It all began in the 1980s under massive deregulation and corporate greed. I will add to that the deregulation and disrespect for the traditional family and the rise of neo-liberalism. It was a perfect storm.

It was lazy politics practised by lazy politicians pandering to special interests at the expense of people who contribute enormously to society. It facilitated this awful divide in America today.

Americans traditionally like to work. They live to work. They have to work and would not want it any other way. Trump’s supporters are the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, of the men who landed at the Normandy beaches and saved Europe from Hitler and fascism — blue-collar men, both black and white, who soldiered together and walked together into Auschwitz to shake hands with Jews. They were drafted into the army to fight the good fight and they were used as fodder to help keep the world safe.

Their descendants in the Rust Belt of America do not need lectures from the plutocrats or Brahmins from American and European society to tell them how to behave themselves.

The black and white working classes are very happy with each other, thank you. I witnessed it. But the liberal elite has to have a reason to exist, and those who are part of it are prepared to destroy America to validate their existence.

They sow seeds of division to stir trouble. They need to get another life.

The greed of the Clintons was enormous. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Hillary’s disingenuous strategy to make this election about feminism, race and sexual identity in order to win was reckless and irresponsible.

The country was already up to speed on these issues and was dealing with them compassionately. The blacks deserve a lot better than the Clintons. As usual, when the truth finally comes out with a stunning election result like this, the media was behind the curve.

The moral of the story is this: power corrupts. Don’t fall into its clutches. Franklin D Roosevelt did not, and Trump will not.

‘Only Trump had the compassion to find out who was hurting in America’