Trump may be losing control of his followers

[leftstreet]

46. +1

Excellent observations, worthy of a thread all its own

This is the base that existed for him, and he just knew how to activate it:

“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud

A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown reveals the real reason the president attracts hardcore supporters.

Jan 8, 2019

On Monday, the New York Times’s Patricia Mazzei published a dispatch from Marianna, Florida — a small, politically conservative town that depends on jobs from a federal prison and thus has been deeply hurt by the government shutdown. In the piece, Marianna residents grapple with the fact that President Donald Trump, who most residents support, is playing a role in the pain created by lost wages.

Most Marianna residents support Trump’s border wall, his key demand in the shutdown fight, and don’t blame him for the fight. But Crystal Minton, a secretary at the prison who is also a single mother caring for disabled parents, had a somewhat different reaction — one that reveals an essential truth about the core Trump’s political appeal.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida