After more than 1,400 days of Donald Trump’s presidency — after two elections, two impeachments and more than 26,000 presidential tweets — it is left to American voters to tally it all up.
Where they are. How they got here. Regrets and rage, trepidation and hope.
The Associated Press talked with Americans of all political stripes and asked them to assess this moment in their country’s history. They do not necessarily fall into neat categories: There are two Air Force veterans, one a Black investor who admires Trump, the other a white retired major who bemoans what has become of the Republican party.
While some expressed confidence the days ahead will find their country in a better place, others said they were fearful of the future, whether because of the violence displayed at the Capitol in recent days or because of concerns about the incoming Biden administration.
They offered broad smiles for these portraits, posing in or near their homes in the East, the South, the Midwest. But all, to some degree, lamented the discord that has beset the United States.
“We have become more Democrats and Republicans than we are Americans,” Trump supporter Bobby Mitchell said.
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JEFF BUTCHER considered himself a non-political centrist before he came to admire Trump, who would “run the country like it was a business.” He praises Trump for fighting to protect jobs and industries from foreign competition. The 51-year-old welder at a forklift factory in Celina, Ohio, feels the election was rigged and leftists were behind the attack on the Capitol, though there is no evidence either is true. And while he hopes “everything goes smooth” with Joe Biden, he fears what Democrats will do, and he wants Trump to run again in 2024.
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CYNTHIA MORRAZ, a 26-year-old student at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, volunteered to help with early voting there. She feels the incoming administration will be more inclusive and hopes it will find a permanent solution for young immigrants who arrived as children and are in the country illegally. Morraz said the background of the Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be beneficial: “To see a woman of color in such a leadership position and someone who embodies the immigrant experience and is a product of that is so uplifting for so many of our communities.”
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FRANK AYLLON does not regret voting for Trump twice. Ayllon, a 37-year-old food services consultant in Miami, credits Trump with dispelling political correctness, with bringing jobs back from overseas and regaining international respect for America. However, he decries the violence committed by Trump supporters: “The rioting, the looting, the antifa methods. We are doing the same thing.” And he said he thinks Biden’s respectful personality will serve the country well. Ayllon said he will support the elected president, regardless of whether he voted for that candidate: “I am an American at the end of the day.”
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JASON PRATS tried to argue with fellow Latinos who supported Donald Trump, pointing out that he had curtailed immigration and restricted asylum. He thinks the reason he was unsuccessful was the influence of disinformation in social media and on the internet. Prats, 30, works in accounting and finance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; he thinks Biden will be a “great model” who will restore America’s character, and Republicans will work with him. “It’s not going to be perfect. Politics is never perfect, but at least never as bad as it has been.”
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BOBBY MITCHELL feels authorities should have ordered a recount he said was needed to restore confidence in the electoral process. While the 39-year-old investor and Air Force veteran from Columbus, Ohio, does not condone the violence at the Capitol — “any patriot should not support that type of behavior” — Mitchell, who is Black, thinks Black Lives Matter demonstrators do not receive the same scrutiny. He praises Trump for “taking care of Americans first in every trade deal,” though “I don’t think there’s any Republican that I know that agrees with everything” the president has done.
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SUE-ANN DIVITO has never been as politically active as she has been for the past four years. A 58-year-old real estate agent from Solebury, Pennsylvania, she helped start a local pro- immigrant organization and went to the Mexican border to protest the Trump administration policy that separated immigrant children from their parents. She deplores the nation’s divisions, and the “toxic mentality” of some Trump supporters she knows. And she hopes this is the beginning of an era of political involvement, that “people stay engaged and not think ‘Hey, everything is going to be fine.’”
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SANDY ATKINS is 59, but she never voted for a president until 2020, when the self-described Christian from Syracuse, Indiana, cast her ballot for Trump. “I like that he won’t back down,” she said. She hoped until Jan. 6 that God would intervene and keep Trump in office; if Biden had won fairly, “I think everyone, even Donald Trump, would have accepted that.” Now, she said, there is too much hatred and a lack of trust that will lead people not to vote. Will she vote again? “If Donald Trump runs again, yes.”