MaddowBlog-Seven weeks in, more Trump voters start to feel buyer's remorse [View all]

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Last edited Thu Mar 13, 2025, 12:39 AM - Edit history (1)

It’s becoming increasingly common to see reports in which Americans are quoted saying, “I voted for Trump last election, but...”

Seven weeks in, more Trump voters start to feel buyer’s remorse

It’s becoming increasingly common to see reports in which Americans are quoted saying, “I voted for Trump last election, but...”

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/seven-weeks-trump-voters-start-feel-buyers-remorse-rcna195620

The NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C., published a striking report last week on an American citizen named Jensy Machado, who was briefly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and who is now starting to wonder whether voting for Donald Trump was a good idea.

Machado said he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men when he was stopped by ICE agents on Lomond Drive in Manassas, a short distance from his home. He said he was confused by what was happening, why agents surrounded the pickup truck. “And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know,” Machado told Telemundo 44’s Rosbelis Quinoñez, who first reported his story. “Everything was really fast.”

.....There are the federal workers who backed the Republican ticket, only to be fired without cause after Inauguration Day. There are the Muslim voters in Michigan who decided to change the name of their Arab Americans for Trump organization after seeing the president’s ridiculous plan to take over the Gaza Strip. There’s the woman in Minnesota who recently told The Wall Street Journal that she sees her support for the president as the “biggest mistake of my life.”

“I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful — embarrassed is a huge one. I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump,” she said.

A recent Washington Post analysis added, “Anecdotes abound about those voters — particularly people affected by President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal programs and firings of government workers — apparently expressing surprise at his actions and even regret for their votes. ... And it’s not just on social media. ... An anti-Trump conservative activist says it’s an increasingly real phenomenon in her focus groups.”....

But as we discussed several weeks ago, it’s not quite that simple. There are electoral implications to consider, and Republicans would be smart to keep them in mind: The more voters disapprove of the incumbent in the Oval Office, the better the opposition party’s chances in the midterm cycle.

Similarly, just as congressional Republicans would feel emboldened if Trump were riding high in the polls, reveling in his broad popularity, the inverse is true, too: GOP lawmakers, worried about their own career prospects, will likely be less inclined to put their necks on the line when they see evidence of the president’s faltering public support.

In other words, the more Americans say “I voted for Trump last election, but...” the more it creates a permission structure for Republican officials to save their own skin, rather than act like White House employees.