Today in Trump Land

Your media obsession with Trumpers sometimes leads to semi-interesting things. Not usually. But at least I can break my blog fast (I was forced against my will to spend 4 days at Disneyworld with my wife and 10 year old niece and then had to travel to Michigan to give a talk) by pointing out some recent examples.

First, we have the New York Times once again returning to the well of the Rust Belt to find white people who are going to vote Trump again. It’s as boring as every other example of this tired trope. But hey, at least we are saying the loud parts extra loud now!

One of those voters is Darrell Franks, a retired tool and die maker, who was once a Democrat but now votes Republican.

“What I want from a president is the rest of the world to look at him and go, ‘Don’t mess with that guy, he will get even,’” Mr. Franks said one morning in the Yankee Kitchen in Vienna Township, Ohio. “I don’t want kinder, gentler. I don’t want some female that wants her agenda.”

But, hey, if only Elizabeth Warren would go on FOX and engage in Mass Politics (TM) like Bernie Sanders, I’m sure we could get this guy back, right!!

Then we go up to Walker Country, Wisconsin, where their beloved national leader is destroying their livelihood.

For decades, Denise and Tom Murray rose before 5 a.m. and shuffled through mud and snow to milk cows on the farm that has been in their family since 1939. This month, after years of falling milk prices and mounting debt, the Murrays sold their last milk cow, taking pictures while holding back tears as the final one was loaded onto a truck and taken away.

“It’s awful hard to see them go out the last time,” said Ms. Murray, 53. “It’s scary because you don’t know what your next paycheck is going to be.”

Wisconsin is known as “America’s Dairyland,” but the milk makers who gave the state its moniker are vanishing, falling prey to a variety of impediments, including President Trump and his global trade war.

Or as Edroso put it:

“Well,” thought the dairy farmer as the bank foreclosed, “at least fewer Mexicans will get their hands on my liquidated assets.” https://t.co/Exa5Tu14dB— Roy Edroso (@edroso) May 19, 2019

The topper though takes us to Georgia, with the story of a white man with a wife who is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Despite her fears and telling him what was going to happen, he still voted for Trump, she was deported, their son got cancer, and she is now in Mexico. Moreover, he still justifies his vote because of abortion!

Like so many separated families, the couple have experienced the years of Trump’s presidency as a grim journey of restless nights and tearful goodbyes. But unlike many in their predicament, Jason voted for Trump.

He knew Trump planned to get tough on immigration — building a wall and deporting drug dealers, rapists and killers. He never imagined anyone would consider his sweet stay-at-home wife a “bad hombre.”

A white delivery driver born and raised in the tiny Alabama town of Smiths Station, Jason, 43, is a laid-back evangelical Christian, and the kind of man who takes the time to ask a customer how her baby carriage turned out and coo over its color.

…

From the beginning, Cecilia eyed Donald Trump warily.

It was clear he never had anything good to say about immigrants, at least not anyone from her country.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said in 2015 when he announced his presidential bid. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems.… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Jason didn’t like much of what Trump said on immigration either.

An independent voter who leans conservative, he voted for Barack Obama in 2008, hoping he would fix the immigration system and make it easier for Cecilia to pursue citizenship.

But this time, immigration was not his main concern.

Jason listened to conservative Christian radio, and his favorite talking heads, like James Dobson, the evangelical psychologist who founded Focus on the Family, convinced him that electing Trump would lead to a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

Cecilia urged him to pay attention to Trump’s vows to build a wall along the southern border and amass a huge “deportation force.”

But Jason’s story is not uncommon. About 1.2 million immigrants who lack legal status — more than 1 in 10 — are married to a U.S. citizen, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Nearly a third have a child under 18 who is a U.S. citizen.

Still, Jason has struggled to win sympathy across the echo chambers of social media.

When Ashton was going through chemotherapy in October, Jason posted pictures on Twitter of his son in a hospital bed, tagging Trump. “Please read this and help my family!” he wrote. “I voted for you because I believed you would be fare to illegals and now my family is suffering!”

Trump did not respond, but others did, dubbing Jason a “hamburger brain” and a “sociopathic monster.”

“Trump doesn’t believe ‘good illegals’ exist,” one commenter wrote. “I feel bad for your boy. I have zero sympathy for you.”

“Why do Republicans lack all compassion until something happens to them directly?”

I mean, it’s hard to disagree with the online commentary here….

He probably wouldn’t vote for Trump again, he said. Still, he isn’t really sure that he made a mistake.

Sometimes he feels stupid or duped or betrayed. But then he thinks back to how he didn’t vote for himself personally but for the greater good — for what he sees as the “noble” cause of outlawing abortion.

“Was it a bad decision for my family? Yes,” he said. “Was it a bad decision for our country? I can’t say. Sometimes you can’t just think about yourself. You have to think about the broader picture.… I feel like God will bless my decision.”

God has definitely blessed you.

What ties all of these stories together is that sometimes in life, you get what you ask for.