Wait, did you guys assume that Trump’s astoundingly lazy and inept failure to follow through on a major campaign promise would sway his voters against him in any way? Haha, that would be very logical.
According to anecdotal evidence collected by Reuters, WSJ and STAT, Daddy Trump is actually not really responsible for his inability to follow the rules of his own book about dealmaking, okay? Leader has incredible stamina to have spent nearly an entire moon cycle on this issue, hello!
“He can’t wave a magic wand,” Ramona Bourdo, a 70-year-old retired nurse in Little Rock, Arkansas, told Reuters. “I’ve not lost confidence in him.”
“Being a businessman, he’ll not take ‘no’ for an answer,” Tony Nappi, a 71-year-old from Trinity, Florida, predicted to Reuters, despite the fact that the president literally just did take no for an answer. “He’ll get the job done.”
Other supporters told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal that they were disappointed in the failure, but suggested that it wasn’t a deal-breaker: “If one thing doesn’t work; move on to another thing,” Carol Jansson, a Republican-leaning voter from Georgia, told WSJ.
Joleen Dudley, a real estate agent in Canton, Georgia, told STAT that we just need to give Trump some time to settle into his new job. “He isn’t one to give up, or he wouldn’t be a billionaire.”
“He knows better,” J.D. Kennedy, 77, a Vietnam veteran, told STAT, “and he’ll do better on the tax cuts.”
So who do they blame? Paul Ryan, Republicans in Congress, and also, oddly, Democrats, who do not control either chamber. From Reuters:
Sharing in the frustration of loyal Republicans was 82-year-old Jeanette Madison, a registered independent in the New York City borough of Staten Island, who voted for Trump.
“I blame the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. They are a bunch of bastards. I’m just fed up,” she said, apologizing for colorful language as she walked her dog down a city street.
From STAT:
Down the street, in a warehouse full of vendors, Bill Moye figured it was the Democrats who should take the fall, even though the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House. The Democrats, he said, are obstructionist. They don’t want Republicans to get anything done.
From WSJ:
It will take a lot more than this one legislative derailment to shake the loyalty of die-hard Trump supporters like Russ Price, of Walled Lake, Mich., who said he was “disappointed that Ryan did not do his job.”
No matter how hard Trump fails at his job, there will likely always be a contingent of people who won’t blame him for it, which is what makes this particular chapter in our democracy so... fun. But I still refuse, on principle, to abandon my belief that Friday was extremely Good.