CREDIT: Kira Lerner/Graphic by Dylan Petrohilos
Trump supporters Bill
Raine, Jim Nelle and David Brown (left to right) attended the Family
Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa this Saturday, July 18.
While the accuracy of those polls is disputed — with pollsters pointing out that Trump is simply riding a wave of high name recognition — there’s still a significant number of GOP voters who would actually vote for a Trump presidency.
At the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa this Saturday where the business mogul spoke, Trump supporters proudly donned pins and T-shirts supporting their candidate of choice. Many of them told ThinkProgress that his business expertise is exactly what the country needs in 2016, even if his views are less than politically correct.
“The county is so far in debt, we’re losing so many jobs to foreign countries. I just think we need a business man to run the country like a business,” Jim Nelle, a small business owner from Winterset, Iowa, told ThinkProgress as he carried signs supporting Trump around the auditorium. “I’m a Christian and I’ve always voted those issues in the past, like abortion was always big, but this election it’s going to be different because if we don’t have a country, what difference does it make if you’re pro-abortion or anti-abortion? I just think we have to get the fiscal situation fixed first.”
David Brown, a farmer and investor from New Virginia, Iowa also told ThinkProgress that he thinks Trump would be the best Republican candidate to secure the nomination.
“Trump is my candidate that I’m supporting and the reason why I’m supporting him is because we’re in financial throes,” Brown said. “Nineteen trillion dollars under zero. We’re not broke, we’re $19 trillion past broke and I believe that he has the business acumen and wisdom to bring the nation back.”
Brown said the fact that Trump has never held public office or worked in politics also appeals to him.
“I think we need people that are beyond manipulation of donors and lobbyists and I do appreciate the fact that he’s running with his own money and beyond manipulation of folks,” Brown said.
Bill Raine, a New Hampton, Iowa resident who attended the event with his wife, agreed. “He’s a businessman, he’s not a politician,” he said. “I’ve seen the guy broke and I see him and he’s a billionaire today, so he’s doing something right.”
The recent media firestorm around Trump centered on comments he made in his campaign launch speech in which he called immigrants from Mexico drug smugglers and “rapists.” He later repeated the remarks, saying that he would still win the Latino vote.
While Latino leaders have taken issue with Trump and the fact that other Republican candidates stood by him, saying it revealed dirty truths about the Republican Party, Trump supporters said didn’t see an issue with Trump’s racism.
“They’re illegal immigrants, they should come through legally,” Nelle said. “He says there’s a lot of great Mexican people and there are. He says they’re smarted than our leaders and they are. So he’s not saying anything against the Mexican people. He’s saying they should come over legally and not illegally and the criminals should be sent back.”
Brown agreed, saying that Trump did not actually call Mexican immigrants rapists but “the Mexican government had sent some that were criminals along with good people as well,” a statement Brown said did not bother him. Raine also did not take issue with Trump’s unfounded attack on undocumented immigrants.
“Where I come from, the area, we have a lot of illegals,” he said. “They work on a lot of hog farms. So I’ve got my feelings there. I don’t think he’s that completely off-key.”
At the summit on Saturday, Trump also made disparaging comments about Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), saying he is “not a war hero” because he was captured. The comments came after days of back-and-forth between McCain and Trump. McCain had said earlier in the week that Trump was firing up “crazies,” and Trump fired back, calling the senator a “dummy” who graduated at the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy.
This time, other Republican candidates were quick to denounce Trump. But Trump supporters in the audience didn’t seem to mind.
Raine said he missed the actual comments but noticed that people seemed upset. And Brown said he took more issue with McCain’s criticism of Trump.
“In regards to Senator McCain, do I find that offensive? I don’t know,” Brown said. “I find it offensive that Senator McCain attacked the people that support Trump and called them crazy. I would be offended at that, so for him to respond back to the fact that he was last or in the bottom of his class, I think that’s probably a matter of public record.”
No comments:
Post a Comment