Trump supporters growing restless
Loyalists say they like the job he’s doing, but they want less ‘bickering, fighting and firings’
There’s trouble in Trumpland. The voters who backed Donald Trump like the disruption he has brought but are looking for more function from the outsider they helped put in the White House, members of the USA TODAY Network Trump Voter Panel said.
Though they still approve of the job President Trump is doing, the collapse of the GOP’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act rattled some of his loyalists. So have chaos in the White House staff and the public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“All the bickering, fighting and firings take time away from solving all of our problems,” said Joe Canino, 62, of Hebron, Conn.
“He’s got to figure out a way to get more done collaboratively with Capitol Hill,” said Barney Carter of St. Marys, Ga. “The Hill, to me, has the most to blame for it, but he’s got to figure out a way to solve that problem.”
The loyalty of the president’s base — voters who tend to be older, socially conservative and white — has been a crucial source of his political strength. Trump continues to hammer messages that appeal to them on such issues as limiting immigration and reversing Pentagon policy on transgender troops.
The spiderweb of concern among his supporters is an anecdotal finding consistent with the results of nationwide polls. A CNN survey at the six-month mark of Trump’s presidency last week showed his approval rating among Republicans at a healthy
83%, but the percentage of Republicans who “strongly approve” had dropped by double-digits, to
59% from 73% in February. None of the 25 voters on the USA TODAY panel expressed regret for casting a ballot last November for Trump instead of Democrat Hillary Clinton or someone else. The panelists generally trust him to handle the crisis with North Korea, although there is concern about his bellicose rhetoric.
Some couched their approval of the president with a hedge that
wasn’t there in three previous rounds of interviews with this group. And their disdain for congressional Republicans and the GOP establishment is rising, a troubling development for the party as it heads into the 2018 midterm elections.
“I approve, but not 100%,” Monty Chandler, 46, a disabled veteran from Church Point, La., said of the president.
“I’d have to approve, but with some laughter in the background,” said Duane Gray, 63, a truck driver from Boise. Asked whether Trump was doing better or worse than he expected as president, he said: “I don’t know what I expected. I just didn’t want Hillary in there.”
There’s also less confidence these days about how history will judge Trump. In January, 21 members of the panel predicted he ultimately would be seen as a “great” or “good” president. In February, there was even more unanimity: 23 gave that positive assessment.
Now that number has slipped to 19 — still favorable territory, but with signs of erosion. Four predict he’ll be seen as a “fair” president. Two didn’t respond.
The panel of 25 Trump voters from 19 states is drawn from respondents in the USA TODAY/ Suffolk University Poll in December, just after the election. The 18 men and seven women, ages 31 to 88, agreed to weigh in occasionally for a look at how Trump is faring with his supporters.
The GOP’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act has enraged some of these voters.
“Killing Obamacare was a key component of the Republican platform, and I believe all Republican senators campaigned on that very issue,” said Daniel Kohn of Corpus Christi, Texas. “The inability to move forward is embarrassing and disgusting.”
Asked whom they blame for the failure, not one singled out Trump, although several volunteered that everyone involved owned some responsibility. Only a handful cited congressional Democrats or the news media, frequent targets of Trump.
Instead, a solid majority placed the responsibility squarely on congressional Republicans.
“There’s some blame to go around with everybody, but I continue to be the most disappointed in Congress,” said Carter, 50, who works for a medical device firm. “We could have had a plan for this long before Trump was elected, and you would have just had to go to the bookshelf and pull the binder off.”
“Seven years: Think about it,” railed JoAnne Musial, 65, of Canadenis, Pa. “Who are they kidding?”
As for the standoff with North Korea, Trump voters see no easy answers. They are inclined to trust him to handle it, but not without some nervousness.
“I’m in agreement with how Trump’s approached it, kind of,” said Francis Smazal, 54, a registered nurse from Marshfield, Wis. “If this guy (in North Korea) is left unchecked, I believe conflict is inevitable.”
But Pat Jolliff, 60, of Rochester, Ind., worried that Trump’s threat of “fire and fury” risked making a bad situation worse: “I think his words, once again, are some of his worst enemies,” she said. “He comes across as a bully, a tyrant.”
The belief that Trump isn’t just another politician, that he has a combative style and is comfortable breaking old norms, is his fundamental appeal for many of his supporters. “Everyone’s having a hissy (fit) because a politician isn’t the president,” Musial scoffed. “Cut and dried: He’s not a politician and doesn’t fit in (your) little clique here, so they’re trying to cause a ruckus for him.”
“Trump is a different kind of person; he’s not a politician,” Shomion agreed. “They’re not used to that. They don’t know what to do with him.”