President Trump’s supporters say his fight is their fight ahead of election.
Supporters say his fight is their fight ahead of election
DiAnna Schenkel is a law school graduate who once ran on the Democratic ticket for her city council. She voted twice for Barack Obama. A 59-yearold suburbanite in North Carolina, she worries about her Black son-in-law being racially profiled by the police, pulled over and beaten or worse.
The portrait of a Biden voter?
No, Schenkel, who is white, is a confirmed supporter of Donald Trump. She voted for him enthusiastically four years ago after becoming disillusioned with the Obama presidency, and plans to vote for his reelection. At the same time, she is wary of expressing her politics openly because she believes that stereotypes of what she calls “Trumpers” like herself, as portrayed on social media and in conversations, are smug and spiteful.
“There’s so many people throwing down really inflammatory words: Racist.
Xenophobic,” she said of the way people regard Trump supporters. “And these inflammatory words carry emotions. It just pivots people to where they’re not going to even tolerate someone for supporting that person. You’re automatically put on trial and you have to testify why you believe what you believe.”
As Trump takes center stage Thursday night at the Republican National Convention he maintains a core of rock-solid supporters like Schenkel who believe he is fighting in America’s best interests and has achieved many of his goals — which are their goals too. He has aggressively cultivated these voters over the last few months with scathing criticism of vandalism that has occasionally arisen from mostly peaceful protests calling for racial justice, and by boasting that, pre- coronavirus, he had built an economy second to none.
For Democrats and many i ndependents, Trump has shattered the norms of presidential behavior with racist tweets and divisive policies; his use of federal agencies to advance his personal interests; and, perhaps most important, his detachment from managing the pandemic, which has killed nearly 180,000 Americans.
The revulsion toward the president that his opponents feel has colored how many regard Trump’s supporters. Portrayals of his base, these supporters say, are often distilled into a caricature: that they are all bigots, in thrall to an authoritarian leader and lost in a fog of fact-denial.
While polling and interviews turn up ample evidence of these traits, tens of millions of Americans will vote for Trump, and there are plenty of supporters who transcend the stereotypes, whose personal experiences or policy interests make him the right fit for them.
In lengthy interviews over the last several weeks, a cross-section of Trump voters said they believed he had succeeded on issues like hardening the Southern border, appointing conservative judges, taking on China and putting “America first.” Many said the president’s grievances were their grievances, too. They believed kneeling during the national anthem was un-American, and they were appalled at what they viewed as liberals’ minimizing of violence that at times grew out of the protests over the killing of George Floyd.
At the same time, Trump voters dismissed as irrelevant aspects of the president’s behavior that critics say make him historically unfit for office. All politicians lie, many said; as for the president’s suggestion that he might not accept the election results, supporters said voters should judge his actions, not his loose talk or tweets.
“I didn’t vote for Trump because I wanted him to be my best friend,” Schenkel said. “I wanted to make a change and a difference.”
She added: “I think he’s very misunderstood.”
Other Trump supporters outlined myriad reasons for wanting to reelect him, ranging from the pragmatic, like a new job made possible by the administration’s policies, to a gutlevel attraction to his hardnosed personality. His supporters related “aha” moments in their upbringing when they realized they were conservatives, which they spoke of as nonnegotiable beliefs woven into their identity, like opposition to abortion.
Kathleen O’Boyle, who sells real estate in the Pittsburgh suburbs, said she did not believe Trump had soft-pedaled the virus at all.
On the contrary, the coronavirus turned out to be “a lot less severe” than initially feared, with fatalities concentrated among older people but barely touching young ones, said O’Boyle, a law school graduate and former litigator.
Trump, she said, had “overreacted based on the information he had available.” She added, “I would have been opposed to an economic shutdown.”
O’Boyle, 60, who called herself a constitutional conservative, said those who fixate on the president’s behavior did not understand what supporters like her admire in him: He has accomplished what she would want from any Republican president.
“It seems there’s an argument that anybody who’s a Trump supporter is not rational, is a racist, just likes him for his personality,” she said. “None of that is true with me. I actually don’t particularly like his personality.”
“For some reason, people who are not Trump supporters can’t understand that Trump supporters are pleased because he’s done what they elected him for,” she added.