The Washington Submit featured a Georgia couple who’s dropping religion in President Donald Trump, and … it’s simply actually freakin’ irritating additional proof of how a lot work we have to do to save lots of this nation from the MAGA scourge.
Jessie Meadows runs a flower store. Her husband, Carter, runs a funeral dwelling. And so they’re a sizzling mess.
The telephone that used to ring all day throughout Trump’s first time period sits principally quiet. Clients are nonetheless reluctant to spend on an “extra” akin to flowers in her nook of small-town Georgia. A field of fake berries from China lately arrived on the store with a be aware explaining that they value 17 p.c extra due to Trump’s tariffs.
What occurred throughout Trump’s first time period? The COVID-19 pandemic.
Yeah, the funeral enterprise was popping again then. That wasn’t a very good factor.
Meadows was beginning to query the president’s potential to maintain his phrase — and never simply on the financial system. She didn’t like his dismissive perspective towards MAGA Republicans who wished to see the federal government’s full recordsdata on convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, after Trump mentioned final yr that he was “inclined” to launch info on Epstein.
She isn’t anti-MAGA, to be clear. She simply doesn’t like Trump’s efforts to suppress the Epstein recordsdata through which he (allegedly) options prominently.
Carter, 37, who runs the native funeral dwelling, additionally voted for Trump final yr, believing he can be good for the financial system. Now tariffs are pushing up costs for one in every of his suppliers, and Carter isn’t certain how lengthy he can maintain off elevating his personal charges. The tariffs, he mentioned, “seemed unplanned and childish.”
Supporters arrive earlier than Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks throughout a rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on Oct. 19, 2024, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
If solely Carter had identified about Trump’s obsession with tariffs—the factor candidate Trump ran on as the answer to just about all the things. Tariffs on China. Tariffs on Mexico. Tariffs on Europe. Metal tariffs, aluminum tariffs, auto tariffs. He even floated tariffs on international locations that don’t “treat us fairly,” which mainly meant the complete world in his addled thoughts.
Trump didn’t simply dabble in tariffs: He made them his complete financial worldview. The oft-failed businessman didn’t perceive international provide chains, didn’t care about penalties, and offered all of it as “America First” when it was actually simply “everyone pays more.”
“I’m not an economist,” he added. “Probably going to hurt before it gets better.”
“But we also really don’t have a suggestion on how to fix that,” Jessie interjected. “We don’t understand enough about it.”
Individuals tried to elucidate it—you add a tax on imports, that tax will get handed on to companies, after which to shoppers. It’s not that tough an idea. However Trump didn’t perceive it, and neither do Jessie and Carter. The distinction is, when the president doesn’t get it, the entire nation pays. When his supporters don’t get it, they only maintain voting to make themselves poorer.
Jessie and Carter are principally dependable Republicans — although Jessie as soon as made an exception for Barack Obama as a result of she favored what he mentioned about free group school.
I’ve been saying it: promise individuals free shit. Life is difficult. The federal government ought to make it simpler. Trump at all times bought this, and promised to decrease costs on Day 1. He didn’t really need a plan. He simply wanted to sign alignment with individuals’s issues about the price of residing.
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Here’s a deeply MAGA voter who nonetheless voted for Obama—a Black Democrat!—as a result of he promised free stuff. And like I’ve been saying, don’t conceal the advantages within the tax code the place nobody can see it. Don’t make it a baby tax credit score—mail a freakin’ verify, with the Democratic president’s identify on it. Ship on that free group school promise. Work on methods to tangibly decrease the price of residing, and voters may begin trusting Democrats once more.
They had been rapidly drawn, in 2016, to Trump’s pitch that he was a political outsider who would run the nation like a enterprise.
You realize what companies don’t do? They don’t subsidize unprofitable companies like rural hospitals, rural faculties, rural broadband, rural postal service, or rural Social Safety places of work.
You realize what companies additionally don’t do? They don’t put a serial failure like Donald Trump in cost. His many bankruptcies weren’t a secret. His supporters simply selected to disregard them.
Their 2016 votes for Trump appeared to repay: Enterprise was nice, and the flower store bought an additional van. Underneath President Joe Biden, they skilled hovering inflation and — final September — a hurricane that hit their rural county exhausting.
Are they … blaming Biden for Hurricane Helene? However to be clear, inflation wasn’t some random act of Democratic incompetence. It was the worldwide financial system reopening after a pandemic Trump mismanaged into disaster. So sure, enterprise was “great” when COVID crammed up funeral properties, then that enterprise was upset when Biden guided the nation out of the wreckage. Trump’s incompetence boosted their backside line. Biden’s competence made them grumble.
The Meadowses nonetheless favored plenty of what Trump was doing. He was following by means of on his promise to crack down on unlawful immigration.
MAGA loves to harm individuals. That’s what they vote for—punishment, cruelty, struggling—so long as it’s another person paying the worth. The minute the ache circles again to them, all of a sudden it’s “childish” and “unplanned.”
The piece goes deeper into the couple’s Epstein fixation, their gripes about bombing Iran, and Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi’s post-Charlie Kirk assassination rant about “hate speech.” Then there’s Jessie’s absurd declare that MAGA doesn’t “depend on one man,” and that if Trump “abandons the movement, then we can continue on without him.”
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However you may’t have a cult with out a chief.
And but their doubts really feel so sacrilegious they gained’t even share them with their 9-year-old son.
“I don’t want to mess up a 9-year-old’s version of the president of the United States by saying, I’m not happy that the president is doing this, this, this,” Jessie advised the Submit. “That’s not something the 9-year-old needs to be worried about.”
They wouldn’t need to cease their child from becoming a member of the MAGA cult sometime.
