Every story I have read about Trump supporters in the past week
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/04/04/every-story-i-have-read-about-trump-supporters-in-the-past-week/?utm_term=.550d4bb18ef8Every story I have read about Trump supporters in the past week
By Alexandra Petri April 4 at 8:13 PM
Since Donald Trump’s approval rating now looks like something that got stuck to the bottom of my shoe, I joined the flood of journalists who went to Real America to gloat see how the Trump supporters are getting along.
In the shadow of the old flag factory, Craig Slabornik sits whittling away on a rusty nail, his only hobby since the plant shut down. He is an American like millions of Americans, and he has no regrets about pulling the lever for Donald Trump in November — twice, in fact, which Craig says is just more evidence of the voter fraud plaguing the country. Craig is a contradiction, but he does not know it.
Each morning he arrives at the Blue Plate Diner and tries to make sense of it all. The regulars are already there. Lydia Borkle lives in an old shoe in the tiny town of Tempe Work Only, Ariz., where the factory has just rusted away into a pile of gears and dust. The jobs were replaced by robots, not shipped overseas, but try telling Lydia that. (I did, very slowly and patiently, I thought, but she still became quite brusque.) Her one lifeline was an Obama-era jobs training program, but she says that she does not regret her vote for Trump and likes what he says about business. She makes a point of telling me that she is not racist, but I think she probably is, a little.
Next to her sits Linda Blarnik. Like the rusty hubcaps hanging on the wall behind her, she was made in America 50 years ago, back when this town made things, a time she still remembers fondly. She says she has had just enough of the “coastal elitist media who keep showing up to write mean things about my town and my life, like that thing just now where you said I was like a hubcap, yes you, stop writing I can see over your shoulder.” Mournfully a whistle blows behind her, the whistle of a train that does not stop in this America any longer.
Linda’s sister, Carla Blarnik is married to an undocumented immigrant yet voted for Trump, who has vowed an increase in deportations. Asked to explain this contradiction, she shrugs. “Do not tell Bert this,” she says, “but I have been trying to find an unobtrusive way to break up the marriage for years and this seemed like just the loophole I was waiting for.” Huh. Okay.
Their waiter is David Mattress, a sentient robot who will be shut down if Trump’s budget is put into practice. He loves Trump, insofar as love is possible for him. When asked “Don’t you realize the contradiction of this position?” the other regulars leap up and shout at me because the last time this question was posed to him, David short-circuited and emitted large quantities of smoke. “First that magazine writer,” Linda scolds me, gesturing to a table in the corner where six other journalists sit writing versions of this same article, “now you.”
Mark Hooglats lives inside Obamacare, don’t ask him how. He voted for Trump. He will vote for Trump again, maybe up to 10 times if he does the thing with the economy. He is excited that Trump has said “God” out loud for what he believes is the first time in the past eight years. (It isn’t.)
In the corner, under a picture of George Washington that is cracked and broken and stained with tobacco juice, lies Herm Slabornik. Herm is encased in a cryogenic tube which will be unplugged if Trump gets his way. According to a note on his cryotube, he knows what Trump said about unplugging tubes but he does not think Trump would unplug him personally. He will vote for Trump again in 2020, provided he is not unplugged. Also, he hates Obamacare.
Glom Pfeffernitz lives in a rusty kettle. Trump’s plan will definitely repossess his kettle, but he does not believe me when I tell him this. “I just don’t think he’d do that,” Glom repeats. Glom’s priority is filling the lakes with waste because he remembers when he was a kid and the lakes used to glow, and he wants to get back to those great days. He says his No. 1 priority is keeping telephones away from the undeserving poor. Is everyone here messing with me?
Claudia Barknappen, the owner of the diner, wipes her hands on her faded God Bless America Apron. She is taken aback to see that Trump’s budget would replace her home with a sinkhole, but she says that she is reserving judgment and likes how much he hates immigrants. “We’ve got to give him a chance,” she observes. She says that one time Trump showed up at her home and hit her dog with a broom, but in her mind this amounts to no more than one strike. She knows that she can change Trump with love, not that he needs to change at all. Behind her, an eagle falls out of a tree and dies.
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But the people from Tulsa Oklahoma I spoke of that Stephanie Miller mentioned in the NY Times article, could be interchanged with those in the satirical piece. Bernie can't make any headway with those in the article there in Tulsa. These are not good People, dumb as a bag of hammers, selfish deplorables. But hey, after their president screws them into the ground and laughs at them, oh well 
Some got THEIRS before the program shuts down (If it does), and to hell with others who need help. Just like a thuglican--just like a deplorable.
In Trump Country, Shock at Trump Budget Cuts, but Still Loyalty.
Nicholas Kristof APRIL 1, 2017
Rhonda McCracken voted for President Trump. Now he wants to cut funding for an organization she says saved her and her son’s lives. Credit Andrea Morales for The New York Times
TULSA, Okla. — Rhonda McCracken is a kindergarten teacher and a Republican who voted for President Trump. Now she’s wrestling with the consequences.
McCracken’s deep-rooted conservatism is matched by a passion to support Tulsa Domestic Violence Intervention Services, a nonprofit that helped her flee an ex- who she says beat and choked her, once until unconsciousness. She became teary as she described how staff members at the organization helped her and her son escape that relationship.
“They saved my life, and my son’s,” she said, her eyes liquid.
So she is aghast that one of Trump’s first proposals is to cut federal funds that sustain the organization. “My prayer is that Congress will step in” to protect domestic violence programs, she said.
Here in Oklahoma, I’ve been interviewing many people like McCracken — fervent Trump supporters who now find that the White House is trying to ax programs they have depended on, to pay for Trump’s border wall and for increases in military spending. And they’re upset.
“Why is building a wall more important than educating people?” asked Billy Hinkle, a Trump voter who is enrolled in a program called Tulsa WorkAdvance that trains mostly unemployed workers to fill well-paying manufacturing jobs. Trump has proposed eliminating a budget pot that pays for the program.
Another Trump supporter in the program, Tarzan Vince, put it this way: “If he’s preaching jobs, why take away jobs?”
Ezekiel Moreno, who also voted for Mr. Trump, credits a training program for his having a good job today. That program would also be hurt by the president’s budget proposal, yet Mr. Moreno, like Ms. McCracken, doesn’t regret his vote.
Judy Banks, a 70-year-old struggling to get by, said she voted for Trump because “he was talking about getting rid of those illegals.” But Banks now finds herself shocked that he also has his sights on funds for the Labor Department’s Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is her lifeline. It pays senior citizens a minimum wage to hold public service jobs. “This program makes sense,” said Banks, who was placed by the program into a job as a receptionist for a senior nutrition program. Banks said she depends on the job to make ends meet, and for an excuse to get out of the house.
“If I lose this job,” she said, “I’ll sit home and die.”
Yet she said she might still vote for Trump in 2020. And that’s a refrain I heard over and over. Some of the loyalty seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots, some from a belief that budgets are complicated, and some from a sense that it’s too early to abandon their man. They did say that if jobs didn’t reappear, they would turn against him.
One recent survey found that only 3 percent of Trump voters would vote differently if the election were today (and most of those would vote for third-party candidates; only 1 percent said they would switch to voting for Hillary Clinton).
Elizabeth Hays, 27, said her life changed during her freshman year in high school, when four upperclassmen raped her. Domestic Violence Intervention Services rescued her, she said, by helping her understand that the rape wasn’t her fault.
She’s profoundly grateful to the organization — yet she stands by Trump even as she is dismayed that he wants to slash support for a group that helped her when she needed it most. “We have to look at what we spend money on,” she said, adding, “I will stand behind my president.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/in-trump-country-shock-at-trump-budget-cuts-but-still-loyalty.html?_r=0
Petri uses words that paint a decrepit and rusting environment populated by the same kind of people.
Cuts to the quick.
...nice takes on the Trump supporters!
