Some turn a deaf ear to Russia allegations
TRUMP’S SUPPORTERS /
WILMINGTON — Thousands of miles from here, the Kremlin is denying accusations that it meddled in the U.S. presidential election. But in this town of rolling farmland and main streets shaded by grain elevators, the barrage of news coming out about the Trump administration’s ties to Russia has fallen on mostly indifferent ears.
“The Russia thing doesn’t fit too well here,” said Harold Rowland in between bites of his breakfast at McDonald’s. “Nobody really cares.”
Rowland, 75, comes almost every morning to this McDonald’s on the outskirts of town to sit and talk with three other Wilmington residents who have formed an informal breakfast club.
They’ve only discussed Russia once in recent weeks — when former national security adviser Mike Flynn resigned over revelations about his potentially illegal contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“He was out of bounds for sure,” said Rowland, who last voted for a Democrat in 1962.
Wayne Smith, 74, said he’s skeptical about all the stories about alleged ties between Trump associates and Russia.
“Is there something there? Probably,” said Smith, who walks with a cane and stands up about every 10 minutes to relieve the pressure on his back, a lingering reminder of his half-century working as a barber before he retired. “But Judas Priest, don’t go overboard.”
Smith said he thinks the media and Democrats have “made a mountain out of a mole hill” and killed off any chance for a rational discussion. When he watched Trump’s joint address to Congress last week, he felt buoyed by it.
“I saw 72 percent approved, or something like that,” said Smith, likely alluding to a joint CNN/ORC poll following the speech reporting that about 7 in 10 who tuned in were more optimistic about the direction of the country.
“It’s a start, but I wish he was more upright, more presidential,” said Smith, smiling. “But you know, he still speaks our language ... the language of the country boy.”
Tom Speer, 70, seems more perturbed by the news on Russia. “Do I think it affected the outcome of the election?” Speer said. “No, but they have no business meddling in ours.”
As for Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador, Speer said the retired lieutenant general had just “put the cart before the horse.”
Still, the four men at the table said they are pleased with how Trump is running the country and remain optimistic, no matter the news coming out of Washington.
“Trump is doing great,” Speer said. “He’s not God or Superman, but he’s done what he could with his executive orders.”
After the election and Trump’s inauguration, the town has been more focused on local issues. In early February, retail giant Amazon. com decided to pull a burgeoning shipping hub and plans for as many as 3,000 new jobs at Wilmington’s airpark, opting instead to take a $10 million dollar tax break to relocate to Kentucky. That news dashed hopes that the town would be able to pump new life into its economy soon. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
At a coffee shop six miles away and closer into town, Emma Heyo, 20, said the Russia news had barely crossed her radar, appearing only sporadically on her social media feeds.
“Russia stuff? I really don’t know much about it,” said Heyo, a part-time barista who is studying medical massage in nearby Dayton. “We’re friendly with Putin right? And friends are better than enemies.”
“To be honest, politics is something I try and avoid,” she added.
Mostly white and with a population of roughly 12,000 people, Wilmington’s surrounding county of Clinton has gone Republican in every presidential race since 1962, when Lyndon B. Johnson was elected. In November, it cast more votes for Trump than any other Republican candidate in the county’s history. In another first, more than 70 percent of Wilmington’s eligible voting population came out to the polls.
Yet there is a small core of residents who are less enamored of Trump.
The Pageturners book club, which meets once a week in the basement of Wilmington’s library, had just finished their discussion of the 2016 bestseller “The Nest” by Cynthia D’Aprix before talking about a recent piece in the New Yorker titled, “Trump, Putin and the New Cold War.”
“Our hair’s on fire and this stuff can’t come out fast enough,” said Mary Thomas Watts about the flood of news about Russia and Trump. A former journalist from Mississippi, Watts sits on the board of the library, leads the Pageturners’ discussion and usually helps organize the weekly progressive happy hour at the General Denver Hotel in town.
After learning that Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have misled Congress by saying he did not have contacts with the Russians during Trump’s campaign, the group of six women and one man was incensed.
“They all have got to go,” Watts said.
Watts traveled to Washington for the Women’s March, while others in the group participated in a smaller march at Wilmington’s courthouse on the same day. “Just imagine this group all in pink hats,” said Watts.
The small group and their liberal leanings are a rarity in Wilmington, a fact they’ve become acutely aware of as the town turned out in droves for Trump.
Julie Butcher, member of the book club and an employee at a local insurance company, said that her 14-year-old daughter has “Trump” yelled in her face regularly at school after she admitted to voting for Hillary Clinton during a mock election in the fall.
“You can’t say anything, and you can’t post anything because you just get attacked,” Butcher said.