Swing county tense as Trump tangles with Iran
MONROE, MICH. >> He flipped anxiously between news stations, bracing for an announcement of bombs falling and troops boarding planes destined for the Middle East. It was a nightmare he hoped he would never see again.
Michael Ingram’s son, Michael Jr., died in Afghanistan in 2010 at age 23. Every day since, Ingram has prayed for American presidents to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring every last soldier home. Instead, it seemed to him this week that the United States was edging perilously close to another one.
The highest-stakes week of President Donald Trump’s administration, when a standoff with Iran pushed the countries to the brink of war, was felt most viscerally by people like Ingram and in places such as Monroe. This blue-collar corner of southeast Michigan has buried young soldiers at a rate higher than in most other places of the country. Here, matters of war and peace are deeply personal.
They may also be politically important come November. Monroe is a swing county in a swing state, part of a cluster of Rust Belt communities along the border of Ohio and Michigan that voted for Democrat Barack Obama but then flipped to help put Trump in the White House in 2016. Its assessment of his performance as commander in chief could decide whether he stays there next year.
Conversations with people here, including many with veterans and military families, reveal how complex that assessment is. Trump’s campaign promise to stop the “endless wars” resonated with many, but so did his pledge to answer aggression with relentless strength. Trump supporters in Monroe say they are not against military action. They just want to win and win quickly. They said they trust Trump will.
A week that began with uncertainty and terror ended with Ingram, and others here, seeming to stand more resolutely behind Trump. Last week, Trump authorized the targeted killing of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded by firing more than a dozen missiles at American bases in Iraq in its most aggressive assault since seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
As the bombs rained down, Ingram had been so tense that he remembered the exact moment Trump walked behind a podium to announce a detente that meant America was not going immediately into war: 11:22 a.m. Wednesday.
“I was proud of Trump because I thought it was going to get a lot worse. I thought it was going to be bombing all night long, and I don’t want anyone to die,” Ingram said of the president he voted for three years ago and suspects he will again.
His sentiment was
repeated by others in this former union stronghold of about 150,000 people, where American flags fly from poles in lawn after lawn. The median household income nears $60,000, higher than the national average, even as the area has suffered some of the same blows to its manufacturing economy as other Rust Belt counties.
Larry Mortimer, a 36-year-old veteran of the Iraq War, did not vote in 2016. He now considers himself undecided. But this past week pushed him closer to Trump, he said, because the president made America look tough.
“It shows that if you pick on us, we’re not going to let you get away with it,” Mortimer said, “and in turn we’re going to show force, we’re not going to back down.”
Monroe County, population 150,000, has had six military casualties since 2001, putting it above the national per capita averages.
Places such as Monroe that have seen their sons and daughters die overseas at higher rates voted disproportionately for Trump, according to a 2017 study by researchers from Boston University and the University of Minnesota. Even when the authors accounted for other factors that could tilt the scales in Trump’s favor — lower college graduation rates, income level, racial diversity — they found Trump did better than previous Republican candidates in communities that have shouldered a heavier burden for the war.