Trump voters see hope, change
Those feeling left behind in U.S. say they backed a man who spoke to their issues
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When Audrey Kaatz and Ashley Wright finally decided whom to support for president, they kept the choice to themselves.
They admired his business sense and blunt-spoken style. But voting for Donald Trump was not something the two were comfortable discussing before the election. Not with their friends. Not with their boyfriends.
“People were scared to say they were voting for him,” Kaatz, 27, said at the upscale salon in Scottsdale, Ariz., where the two women work.
When people hear she supported Trump, said the 28-year-old Wright, “They think, ‘Oh, so you must be a racist,’ and that isn’t fair or true.”
Days after the Republican businessman pulled off one of the most astonishing political upsets in the country’s history, Americans are still trying to sort through the implications.
To his many critics, Trump is a bigot and a clown. The thought of him in the Oval Office is enough to produce stomach-churning anxiety.
But conversations with Trump voters across the country — Democrats, Republicans, political independents — turned up a different perspective.
They see an outsider unbeholden to a corrupt political system and brave enough to stake bold positions. They consider him fearless enough to defy the confines of political correctness. They view him as a successful businessman, but possessing a common touch.
His victory brought euphoria, relief.
Norman Gardner, 67, who runs a mobile home park in Shelbyville, Tenn., wanted to go outside and holler at the moon.
Sure, Trump said some vile things during an exceedingly nasty campaign. But for those who supported him, that was part of what made an unconventional candidate.
Trump was misunderstood and maligned by a biased news media, his supporters insist, and many feel misunderstood and maligned as well.
Contrary to perceptions, it wasn’t all angry white men, terrified of the country’s changing hue, who swept Trump into office.
Kaatz, the Arizona hairdresser, for instance, is dating a black man she expects to marry next April and looks forward to raising their mixed-race children. Wright lives in the Phoenix suburbs and welcomes the Muslim and black children who scamper through her front yard.
“I don’t look outside and think my neighbors are going to bomb me,” Wright said — though she welcomed the notion of a wall along the border with Mexico, a three-hour drive from her parents’ home in Tucson.
The notion of two Americas, one ascendant, the other convinced it is slipping ever further behind, has become a staple of the country’s politics and its national narrative as well.
Many Trump supporters belong to the latter, an America of dislocation and loss: lost jobs, lost opportunities. A lost sense of belonging.
In Shelbyville, a town of about 20,000, Gardner spoke of the businesses that have vanished: the company that built fireplaces. The factories that made pencils. The textile mills.
“Nothing’s come in to take their place,” he said. “We need to bring industry back and I think (Trump) can do it.”
Trump’s economic nationalism resonated with Emmett Lawson, an African-American who fled Cleveland for Orlando, Fla., after losing his job in a steel mill. He blames the North American Free Trade Agreement, which President Bill Clinton signed into law and Trump derides as the worst bargain in the history of creation.
Trump “saw it and spoke about it,” Lawson said of NAFTA. “That spoke to me.”
In Huntington Beach, Calif., Anthony Miskulin, 37, used to make six figures as a loan officer, until the Great Recession hit. Now he toils in corporate sales, making $26,000 a year.
“I never anticipated being in this situation,” he said. “My vote for Donald Trump, it wasn’t out of bigotry. It wasn’t out of hatred. It was about survival.”
Miskulin wants a betterpaying job. He wants a stronger economy. He wants, among other priorities, for Trump to deal with illegal immigration, which Miskulin blames for soaring housing prices and a drain on public services.
Those racial undercurrents were an undeniable part of the Trump wave.
For some, making America great again means returning to a time when it was whiter, more male-dominated and more in line with what the Religious Right and its political allies call traditional family values.
Tonya Register, a 57-yearold Trump supporter in Fountain Valley, said it was plainly wrong to see the White House lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage. “That was not cool to me,” said Register. “And I’m an American, too.”
Many of Trump’s supporters readily conceded there is considerable risk handing the country over to a man who has never served in the military or spent a moment in government — something the country has never done in its entire history.
But looking ahead, it is clear what Trump supporters expect. A stronger economy. More jobs with better pay. Lower taxes. Less bureaucracy. Cheaper and more available health care.
“I finally feel optimistic,” said Miskulin. “I think Donald Trump is not only going to be great for the country but also great for the American people, not a small minority of bureaucrats and labor union members.” Mark Barabak reported from Las Vegas.