Right and left fed up with Trump clamor
People concerned focus on president’s manners obscures news that matters
Every morning when Mary Johnson checks the news, she seems to see a new joke that has President Trump as the punchline. Only she is not laughing. “People are sick and tired of it,” said Johnson, 68.
After last week’s revelations that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. arranged a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer during last year’s presidential campaign to get potentially damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the headlines and news features, the opinion columns and TV segments — not to mention the cracks on latenight TV — shifted into high gear.
“In reality, Russia is not impacting my life as an American every day. Whatever happened with Russia and whoever was colluding with Russia, that’s not impacting my existence in this country.” Suehalia Amen, 38. an advocate for the Arab-American and Muslim community in Dearborn Heights, Mich.
“I think that the biggest problem is all of the changes that are occurring that people sort of hear about and then they don’t hear about it again, like the environmental protections that are disappearing.” Mary Johnson, 68, of Louisville
“Say, at the end of the day, they do find out Russia had some kind of impact on the election. What do you do about it? We just need to get down to the business of bringing jobs back to America." Chris Elswick, 52, of Mansfield, Ohio
“I think that we are wasting millions — and possibly billions — of taxpayer dollars searching for Bigfoot, probably. It’s just ridiculous.” Brian Easton, 47, of Indianapolis
It’s not just Republican supporters of Trump who are tiring of the jokes, innuendo and articles aimed at the president or the people around him and speculation over whether they colluded with Russia. Even some Democrats, such as Johnson, say enough is enough.
“I think the Russia thing is possibly more interesting to the media than the average voter,” said Johnson, who wonders whether people will be so fatigued by the never-ending onslaught of Trump-based news — rather than stories about his policies — that they will have tuned out by next year’s midterm elections.
“I think that the biggest problem is all of the changes that are occurring that people sort of hear about and then they don’t hear about it again, like the environmental protections that are disappearing,” she said.
Six months after becoming president, scoring a job approval rating of less than 42%, Trump remains the hottest media commodity.
Some people are asking whether all that scrutiny on the man and his tweets is taking attention from tax policy, health care and other important issues before Congress.
Those concerns come from both the right and the left. NOT WHAT INTERESTS THEM “I talk to reporters who go out and talk to these people who live in rural and small-town America, and anecdotally, they say this is not what these voters are interested in,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “Many of them have moved beyond the Russia story.
“It was politically stupid what he (Donald Trump Jr.) did, but this is not something the average voter is into,” he said.
As last year’s presidential election proved, the average voter in rural and small-town America — especially in the Industrial Midwest — can matter greatly.
Even as Trump lost the national popular vote to Clinton, he won by slim margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states that hadn’t voted together for a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1984 — by running up the rural vote.
Those defections delivered him the election.
As for Russia being topmost in people’s minds, it’s difficult to point to any statistical evidence: Few polls ask Americans how concerned they are about the issue.
In a poll of 1,500 people conducted by The Economist/ YouGov last month, Russian involvement in the election wasn’t listed among 15 issues respondents considered most important to them.
The same poll showed 50% were somewhat or very concerned about “improper relations” between the Trump administration and Russia.
Thirty-six percent were either not very concerned or not concerned at all, and the rest didn’t know.
Asked whether Trump did anything illegal or improper in dealing with Russia, 40% or more said no, and about 25% said they were unsure.
“Say, at the end of the day, they do find out Russia had some kind of impact on the election. What do you do about it?” asked Chris Elswick, 52, of Mansfield, Ohio, who runs an appliance repair company and teaches business and economics at Ashland University. “We just need to get down to the business of bringing jobs back to America.”
Though Elswick didn’t want to say whom he voted for last year, he did say he was dissatisfied with both major-party candidates and criticized the non-stop bombardment of non-news about Trump.
“It was like a circus every time he was on television, and evidently, people enjoyed watching the circus,” Elswick said. “I’d like to see a lot more scrutiny about his policies.”
Trump supporters largely agree with the president that the Russia investigation is a media “witch hunt.”
“They’re not even making an attempt to be fair. They’re flatout after this guy,” said Joe Salcido, 67, of Huron County, Mich. “The liberal media, they’re starting to lose their grip on reality.”
Salcido said that when Clinton was investigated for using a private e-mail server as secretary of State, the news media seemed more willing to dismiss the problem than they are to move beyond the possibility of collusion between Trump’s team and Russia.
As for whether Trump Jr. met with the Russians to receive information on possible incriminating behavior by Clinton, Salcido compared the matter to a criminal investigation in which an investigator flips an associate to get a conviction.
“If the story is true, if the facts are true, isn’t it better if I find out rather than I don’t find out?” he said. ‘A BIG SMOKESCREEN’ Eileen Sorokas, 70, a County Council member in Luzerne County, Pa., said, “It’s getting to the point where it’s disgusting. I think it’s a big smokescreen.”
The Democrat voted for Trump in the past election after supporting Democrat Barack Obama in the previous two elections.
Even if the Russians did try to affect the election, she said, “they didn’t influence me.” She said she’d like to see all the character pieces and columns on Trump — as well as the speculation on Russia — take a back seat to coverage about what’s going on in Washington on health care, tax policy, immigration controls and other issues.
In Indianapolis, Brian Easton, 47, who works at manufacturing company Carrier, began supporting Trump the moment the real estate tycoon announced he was running for office in 2015.
He said he’s not sure what to believe about the Russia investigation, but he doesn’t believe there was “anything of significance.”
“I think that we are wasting millions — and possibly billions — of taxpayer dollars searching for Bigfoot, probably,” he said. “It’s just ridiculous.”
David Badgett of Louisville — a Republican who is part of a group called Young Professionals for Trump — said he worries the Russia controversy has become a distraction, not only for voters but for the Trump administration.
“You’ve got to get Democrats and Republicans working together,” he said. “But all this stuff of pointing fingers ... it’s old. It’s a huge distraction from the real problems.” ‘EXHAUSTING’ TO KEEP UP That’s not to say there aren’t voices out there clamoring for more information about what contact the Trump campaign might have had with any Russialinked officials before the election.
In May, the U.S. Department of Justice appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee an investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
For those zeroed in on the investigation — and Russia’s alleged attempts to hack into the Democratic National Committee as a way to hurt Clinton — last week’s news about Trump Jr. landed like a bombshell.
While campaign experts and lawyers opined about whether Trump Jr.’s meeting violated campaign or other laws, Trump’s defenders made it more of a simple question of a son and campaign official trying to get information that could help his father win, not an attempt to collude in an illegal enterprise with the Russians.
Even Trump’s critics say they are getting worn out trying to keep up with the news as it develops.
“I will say the past few months have been the most exhausting months of my life, trying to keep up with everything,” said Tim Peacock, 37, a Louisville Democrat who sees the Russia story as more important than ever.
He sees himself as possibly getting burned out over time, though he doesn’t know whether he can take a break anytime soon. “If you stop reading the news for six months, especially now, the whole world could change,” he said.
Brandon Evans, 32, an Indianapolis marketing strategist for a tech company and a Democrat, agreed. “There (are) just so many controversies, and they come at such a blistering speed that it is hard to keep up some days,” he said. “We’re definitely in a marathon of scandals, not a sprint.”
Though Evans is concerned about Russia and remains a Trump critic, he said he wonders whether the president, amid the controversies, is paying attention to critical policy issues such as health care.
While much of the news media’s focus is on Russia, he said, it is incumbent on him and others to learn more about policy and even some arcane congressional rules — such as those for budget reconciliation, under which a health care overhaul and other bills could pass with a simple majority vote in the U.S. Senate.
“There’s been a little bit of a wake-up call to a lot of people, including myself, that we have to do more than just post on Facebook or whatever,” Evans said. “We have to put ourselves in little uncomfortable situations, meet new people, talk to new people, do things that take us out of our houses and off of our computer screens.” UNIMPACTED, UNRELATED In Dearborn Heights, advocate and activist Suehaila Amen, 38, who works with the area’s large Arab-American and Muslim community, said that although Russia is important, “we have more serious issues to be concerned about.”
She said she worries that while the news media’s focus has been on the campaign and the prospect that laws have been broken, attention to other matters — such as the impact of millions of people potentially losing health care coverage or of a partially reinstated travel ban on families from several majorityMuslim nations or of deportations separating families across the USA — has been occasional, at best.
“In reality, Russia is not impacting my life as an American every day,” she said. “Whatever happened with Russia and whoever was colluding with Russia, that’s not impacting my existence in this country. ... People need to be more focused on the issues that are going to truly impact their lives.
For some people, pretty much all the talk in Washington seems unrelated to their lives.
Roof awning installer Kevin Gulley of Delhi Township, Ohio, was glad to ignore federal drama while working in Independence, Ky.
“I go to work and come home, and I’m tired,” said Gulley, 36. “I just feel like my class, we just aren’t impacted by this stuff. You either have to be poor or rich for that stuff to affect you. I’m in the working middle class.
“I’m not big on Trump or Obama,” he said. “And I’m not on Twitter.”
‘They didn’t influence me.’ Eileen Sorokas, Hunlock Creek, Pa.
Contributing: Jenny Ung and Stephanie Wang of the Indianapolis Star and Chris Mayhew, Courtney McNaull and Genevieve Ramsey of the USA TODAY Network- Ohio