A year later, Trump voters blame the tweets for his woes
This isn’t quite what they expected. Voters who helped put candidate Donald Trump in the White House did so because he promised to shake up a political system they didn’t think was working for them. Now, almost exactly one year after his election, they worry his disruptive persona and provocative rhetoric may be undermining his ability to make the government work for them.
They share no broad consensus about what his biggest achievement has been to date – he has yet to sign a major piece of legislation – and in what could create complications for the administration, they don’t agree what his top priority should be now.
What most do agree on, however, is what’s gone wrong: All those tweets.
“I do like the way he’s shaken things up in numerous ways, but I definitely would like him to be more presidential,” says Margie Chandler, a business manager from Old Monroe, Missouri. “He doesn’t know when to stop talking.”
“Some of his tweets are, like, what the hell does this have to do with running the country?” says Francis Smazal, a registered nurse from Marshfield, Wis.
Chandler and Smazal are members of the USA TODAY Trump Voter Panel, a sort of free-floating focus group of 25 Trump voters from across the country who have been weighing in every other month or so. Drawn from respondents to the final USA TODAY/ Suffolk University Poll of 2016, their conversation in 2017 by email and phone takes the political temperature among core voters who contributed to last year’s upset victory for the outsider candidate.
As the one-year anniversary of his election approaches Wednesday, Trump still scores a perfect approval rating among these voters, but with some caveats. Not one person in the group says he or she would change their vote in 2016, if given the chance. They tend to dismiss the escalating investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, and the possibility that Trump associates colluded with Moscow, as just politics.
But they also express less confidence than before about whether Trump can deliver and more concern about his behavior.
In the first months of Trump’s presidency this year, as many as 13 of these voters predicted history would judge Trump to be a “great” president. That number now has dropped to seven.
“He isn’t drowning, but he isn’t on land, either,” says Duane Gray, a truck driver from Boise. “Presidentially, I kind of like where he’s going. Personally, he needs to put that phone down and learn to shut his mouth when he needs to. His mouth is his own worst enemy.”
Gray is one of a few on the panel who believe that the Russia investigations hold peril for the president.
“If these Russian contacts or whatever come through as collusion, then his ass is grass,” he says. He predicts there could be new and damaging revelations in the wake of the first criminal indictments announced last week by special counsel Robert Mueller, “when people start facing prison time.”
The more common assessment among this group, though, is that the Russia investigations are nothing more than what Monty Chandler, a disabled veteran from Church Point, La., dismisses as “a dog-and-pony show.”
“It’s dirty politics,” says Patricia Shomion of Mount Gilead, Ohio. “I find it interesting that these things should be prosecutable, but all the stuff that Hillary (Clinton) has done was just, they’re forgiven.”
A development they do appreciate since they cast their ballots: Nearly all agree that the nation’s economy is doing better, although only half say that upturn has been reflected in their own family’s finances.
But they are almost evenly divided over whether the country’s security has improved or stayed the same over the past year, and the terror attack in New York City last week that killed eight people rattled some.
“We’re more secure,” Shomion declares. “We have a new commander.”
But Jason Felts, a paramedic from Galax, Va., is alarmed by Trump’s verbal confrontations with North Korea’s unpredictable leader, Kim Jong-un. “He should be a little more diplomatic when dealing with this man,” Felts says.
“Even if he takes the right actions,” Anne-Marie Smith, a computer analyst from Monsey, NY, says of Trump, “his maturity level could put us in a confrontation with North Korea.”
A striking two-thirds of his supporters express at least some concern about the president’s tendency to punch and counterpunch, especially on Twitter. In response to an open-ended question to name the “worst thing” Trump has done, more than half cite aspects of his personal behavior.
“He creates too many distractions, which weakens any momentum in policy and legislation,” says Ken Cornacchione, a financial consultant from Venice, Florida.
In contrast, Michael Colombo, who works in sales in Old Bridge, NJ, likes Trump’s style. “Sometimes he shoots from the hip; sometimes he talks before he thinks it all the way out,” he says. “But you know what? That’s the trait of an honest man.”
Answers were scattered in response to an open-ended question about the “best thing” the president has done.
Appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, says Colombo. “Calling out” other countries in the United Nations, says Cheyne Henry, a business manager from Red Lion, Penn. Supporting the military, says Keely Vazquez, a small-business owner from St. Paul. Easing environmental regulations, says John Karr, a retiree from Federal Way, Wash.
“Draining the swamp” in Washington, says Pat Joliff of Rochester, Ind., although she adds, “He has some reptiles in his organization also.”
Three of these core Trump supporters couldn’t or wouldn’t name a “best thing” Trump has done; four declined to name a “worst thing.” As a group, they are more likely to blame the administration’s legislative setbacks on forces other than the president, among them opposition Democrats, maverick Republicans including Arizona Sen. John McCain, and a news media they call unfair.
That gridlock has caused Shomion’s high hopes for action to fade.
“They haven’t done anything yet, and now they’re infighting, so I don’t see it going better,” she says.
“I thought they could. I really did, because now the Republicans are in control of the House and the Senate and the presidency. They should be able to pass anything they want, just like the Democrats did under (President) Obama. They can’t get their act together for two seconds.”
Now, she wants Trump to renew the battle to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
But there was no unanimity about what the president’s top priority should be in the next six months, before campaigning for the 2018 congressional elections complicate efforts to pass just about anything. They divide among various promises Trump made during the campaign.
Fewer than a third chose the tax-cut bill that the president has declared is at the top of his agenda. A half-dozen urged him to try again to repeal Obamacare. Four cited an infrastructure bill to help finance new roads and bridges. Only two wanted him to focus on tightening immigration laws and building a wall along the southern border, his signature campaign promise.
A year after that heady evening when their candidate won the White House, some now say that the jury is out on whether he can and will prevail over the long haul.
“If he can get bills passed, I think he’ll be a great president,” Monty Chandler says. “If he can’t, then I think he’s just going to be a guy who showed he couldn’t overcome the Congress, that he was not a tough enough man to stay on top of the media.”
So far, he says, “I think he’s had a lot harder time than he expected.” – USA Today/TNS