Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country [View all]

[riversedge]

Link to tweet

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at the Kermit Fire & Rescue Headquarters Station on Friday in Kermit, West Virginia. | Craig

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/11/warren-west-virginia-2020-1317611



Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country
The liberal firebrand draws nods and even a few cheers on a trip through rural West Virginia.

By ALEX THOMPSON

05/11/2019 04:46 PM EDT

KERMIT, W. Va. — It was a startling spectacle in the heart of Trump country: At least a dozen supporters of the president — some wearing MAGA stickers — nodding their heads, at times even clapping, for liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren.

The sighting alone of a Democratic presidential candidate in this town of fewer than 400 people — in a county where more than four in five voters cast their ballot for Trump in 2016 — was unusual. Warren’s team was apprehensive about how she’d be received.

About 150 people gathered at the Kermit Fire & Rescue Headquarters Station to hear the Massachusetts senator and former Harvard professor talk about what she wants to do to fight the opioid epidemic. Trump-supporting college students in baggy t-shirts, housewives in pearls, and the fire chief dressed in uniform joined liberal retirees wearing rainbow “Persist” shirts and teachers with six-figure student loan debt.


Kermit is one of the epicenters of the opioid addiction epidemic. The toll is visible. The community center is shuttered. Fire trucks are decades old. When Warren asked people at the beginning of the event to raise their hands if they knew somebody who’s been “caught in the grips of addiction,” most hands went up.

“That’s why I’m here today,” she said.

.................................................................


............................................................


But Warren didn’t come to rural West Virginia primarily in search of votes. The tiny state likely won’t decide the nomination, and is all but certain to back Trump in the general election.

Instead, Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one.

The “opioid war” is a medical problem rather than a behavioral or law enforcement one, Warren argued. Her plan is modeled on the government’s response in 1990 to the HIV/AIDS crisis, as she explained in a Medium post earlier this week................................