TRUMP PUMPED UP FOR MIDTERM POLLS
US President Donald Trump interacts with the crowd after he spoke at a rally in Pensacola, Florida. Campaigns reached a fever pitch as the US voters get ready to vote in the elections to House of Representatives, the Senate and Governorships on November 6. —
Sometimes they probe me into why I voted Trump, as if it’s a murder and I’m on trial. My friends are having similar experiences. It really is tiring. Dante Bucci, A 11-year-o;d marketing student
washington — Dante Bucci is a 22-year-old marketing student who lives in one of Washington’s most hip neighbourhoods.
The New Jersey native is clean cut, well dressed and well spoken.
But as a Republican in one of the most liberal cities in America, his political views are kryptonite in the US capital’s dating world, where he frequently finds himself attracted to Democrats.
“A lot of first dates. Not a lot of second dates,” Bucci says of his love life these days. “I think Donald Trump has a lot to do with that.” In the 2016 presidential election, Trump earned... four percent of the vote in the District of Columbia.
It’s not exactly great math for a young, single conservative man who backed the real estate mogul.
And with November’s key midterm vote stoking political tensions, Republicans like Bucci are finding that romance is all but dead. “They want to date someone that they can agree with on some issues,” laments Bucci, who supports abortion rights and gay marriage and calls himself a moderate Republican. “’I’m a Republican but...’ — I’ve started so many sentences that way.”
Enter: DonaldDaters.com, a website connecting those who support the Republican president.
Its slogan? “Make America Date Again,” of course.
“I felt a real need for this app,” said Emily Moreno, a 25-year-old Republican who founded the site after speaking to many of her friends.
Moreno told AFP that many people in Washington said if they mentioned working for Trump or Republican causes to a potential love match, “the date is shut down — it’s a deal-breaker.”
Four days after launching the site in mid-October, Moreno said the app had been downloaded 20,000 times. On other widely used dating apps like Tinder or Bumble, Bucci said he found nothing but landmines. According to a sample of several dozen Tinder profiles consulted by AFP, many women urged Republicans guys to swipe left — meaning to pass them by. Kendall, 23, is one of those women. “Allergic to bees and Republicans” reads the bio on her Tinder profile.
“They don’t respect my autonomy. They don’t respect women. They voted for a person who openly bragged about sexually assaulting women so no,” she told AFP when asked why she was ruling out the men of the GOP. Bucci says that so many of his first dates go off the rails with the first question: “Did you vote for Donald Trump?”
When he says yes, he gets all kinds of responses, not all of them pleasant.
“Sometimes they probe me into why I voted Trump, as if it’s a murder and I’m on trial,” he said, adding that his friends are having similar experiences. “It really is tiring.”
One of Bucci’s friends even had a drink thrown in his face.
As a result of the difficult dating scene, Bucci — who works for a high-profile conservative organisation while pursuing his studies — is considering leaving Washington for good. He says his lackluster love life is about 20 per cent of his reason for wanting to go.
“This is not a normal city,” he says. “You can’t even go for a drink without talking about the Supreme Court or the deficit.” For Bucci, the polarisation of America has basically transferred to the dating pool. “We are in a society where you can only date or be with people that think like you,” he said. —