SOUTH HADLEY — Supporters of President Donald Trump in Hampshire County still believe he can set the country on the right path, despite a tumultuous first year in office.
“My opinion has not changed,” said Bill Johnson, owner of Pleasant Street Auto in South Hadley and chairman of the Granby Republican Town Committee. “I think he tweets too much, but I don’t think the press has given him credit for the things he has done.”
With a booming stock market, widespread deregulation and an outsider’s approach to politics, Johnson and others say only the liberal media and Trump’s temper stand in the way of success.
“I think he’s doing a fine job,” said Stanley “Buster” Symanski, owner of M&S Electric in Hatfield. “He tells the American people what they want to hear.”
Trump voters interviewed by the Gazette all agreed the president needs to stay off Twitter and learn to bite his tongue.
“I am kind of disappointed in Trump, only because of his mouth,” said Tom Kelleher, 81, over coffee with his golf league at the Egg & I diner in South Hadley. “How can you get people to work with you if you’re criticizing them and degrading them and calling them names?”
Kelleher’s fellow golfer, Frank Simone, 69, agrees.
“He’s more transparent than the other guys,” said Simone, a South Hadley resident and Air Force veteran. “I don’t agree with all the texting he’s doing, but all the newspapers are against him, so that’s why he’s doing all that.”
Across the table, Amherst resident and league member Butch Beaudin, 73, had a different opinion.
“I think he is the worst thing that ever happened to this country,” Beaudin said. Beaudin voted for Democrat
Hillary Clinton in 2016, and likened the president to a dictator, calling him racist, divisive, unqualified for the job, and a showman who should be impeached.
Kelleher would just call him a liar.
“You like to think he’s not lying but you know he is,” Kelleher said. “I like the guy because he’s got great ideas, but for everything he does he messes it up by tweeting.”
“I was for giving him a chance,” said Bob Methot, 82, a South Hadley resident who chose not to vote in the 2016 election. “He’s doing a few things, but he’s not smart enough to keep his mouth shut.”
Northampton resident Joseph Tarantino serves as chairman of the Northampton Republican City Committee and co-chairman of the Hampshire County Western Massachusetts Republicans. He had low expectations for Trump when he assumed office, and thinks one of his most significant accomplishments was appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
“I want the Democrats to take their own advice and stop the vitriolic hatred that’s just infused with their self-righteousness because it’s ‘the good kind of hate,’” Tarantino said. “It’s noble to hate oppression, and it’s noble to hate poverty, but to hate people, it’s just such crap.”
Clinton won Hampshire County in the 2016 election, with 55,367 votes to Trump’s 21,790. However, for the first time in decades, three Hampshire county towns voted Republican: Granby, Huntington and Ware, all by small margins.
Dramatic change-ups in the executive office, like the firing of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, FBI Director James Comey, and national security advisor Robert Flynn, have done little to shake their confidence in the president.
“One year into a presidency is still rather early I think,” Johnson said. “It’s like opening a business, it’s in a constant flux.”
Many Trump voters have in common a broad distrust of career politicians and their stranglehold on the “liberal media.” Most feel Trump has remained somewhat consistent with his promises, but the media blasts any attempts at compromise as inconsistency.
“Ninety-five percent of the coverage of him is negative and almost all of that is something he said or tweeted,” Tarantino said. “There is very little substance when it comes to the complaints about the president.”
Barry Potter, the 70-year-old owner of Webster’s Garage in Belchertown, said he listens to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, watches Fox News and calls the activist organization MoveOn.org “treasonous.” For him and other like-minded conservatives, the media’s rosy depiction of Hillary Clinton and hyperfocus on Trump is evidence of the Democratic conspiracy.
“Every single day, MSNBC and CNN have nothing to say good about any of Trump’s accomplishments,” Potter said. “They’re more concerned with his weight.”
Support for the new tax bill and corporate tax cuts was widespread.
“It trickles down,” Potter said. “I think he’s trying to keep businesses in this country.”
Nowadays, many new cars are too high-tech to work on in Potter’s shop, so customers must get them serviced elsewhere. This anxiety, coupled with a shrinking middle class, fear of automation, and inflation were on the forefront of some Trump voters minds during the campaign, and still are.
“Do I embrace American pride and American ingenuity?” Johnson said. “When we’re dealing with other countries should we put America first? Yes, I think so.”
Many supporters believe someone with private sector experience knows best how to run a nation. Repealing regulation to help small businesses, overhauling the tax code and a skyrocketing stock market are evidence to them of his success.
“Trump has signed somebody’s paycheck before,” Tarantino said. “The people who are around Obama, none of them had private sector experience.”
They also believe Trump does not get the credit he deserves for recent economic growth, partly to do with Trump’s commitment to deregulation.
“Everybody says they think the rich should be paying more money and they are paying more money under these tax plans,” Johnson said.
As a small business owner, Johnson said health care mandates when he oversaw any more than 50 employees were too expensive to expand his business.
“I’d like to see a lot of deregulation on a lot of things, but I just hope we don’t go too far,” Robin LaBorde, 63, of Granby, said.
Some have trouble trusting the president and still don’t know what to expect.
“I thought he would get some things done,” Kelleher said. “I had no idea that things would go the way they have gone.”
Distrust in career politicians by Trump supporters created an “anyone but Hillary” mentality around election time that persists today. They focus on theories of the Clintons’ corruption and dismiss the Russia investigation as a distraction.
“I don’t think that Russia subverted the election. If anything, Clinton did,” Potter said. “He’s outside of political corruption. I think he’s a patriot and he doesn’t need the money.”
Others saw Trump’s attacks on Clinton as unnecessary and spiteful.
“To call someone running for president Crooked Hillary, lock her up. Why do you do that? You don’t need to do that,” Kelleher said.
Others think Democrats’ animosity towards Trump is counterproductive.
“I didn’t vote for Obama, but I never wished him to fail,” said Johnson. “To me, if the president fails, the country fails — and I can’t get over that.”
Across the diner, Joyce Joyal, 74, ate breakfast alone. She voted for Clinton and said she doesn’t talk about politics much after her husband passed away years ago.
“A lot of the people I know voted for (Trump),” she said. “He was this big thing, he was going to bring big change, but it hasn’t been the change they wanted. Now they don’t talk about him much anymore.”
On the issue of immigration, Trump supporters were most pleased with the president’s focus on enforcement, even if they found his rhetoric overbearing. Most did not take his promise to build a wall literally, and support a legal path to citizenship.
“I’m not against immigration at all, but it needs to be done legally and through proper channels,” Johnson said.
Kelleher agreed.
“We have trouble with illegal immigrants committing crimes, we have problems with everybody committing crimes,” Kelleher said. “It’s just highlighted because they’re illegal.”
Some are bothered by the concept of sanctuary cities, questioning why a city would make themselves a target for illegal immigrants. Others see their presence as an economic hindrance.
“So many cities and towns in California are broke because there’s a lot of immigrants being let in there who don’t pay taxes,” Simone said. However, he does think that Trump’s “shithole” comment went a little too far,
“It’s totally wrong,” Simone said. “He should really bite his tongue sometimes.”
“Haiti is what he called it,” Potter said. However, he blames their poverty on a corrupt Clinton Foundation, and on former Haitian presidents for squandering millions in relief money sent to the country.
For others, the president’s combative and unfiltered manner of speaking is part of his appeal because it makes him appear more honest.
“I’d rather have someone who trips over his tongue sometimes than a smooth-talking politician,” Johnson said.
“I definitely do not agree with everything,” LaBorde said. “He tends to sometimes stick his foot in his mouth, but then again, I stick my foot in my mouth quite a bit.”
LaBorde thinks there is a certain camaraderie missing from American life, one eroded over decades.
He longs for a time when neighbors took care of one another, and did not have to rely on taxes or social welfare programs.
“There needs to be a more grassroots movement of the people doing things for themselves, not the government,” LaBorde said. “I think we need to get back to looking at the bigger picture of people helping people.”
Central to many Trump supporters’ discontent is a longing for the way things used to be, before the Great Recession and its raised gas prices and taxes.
Methot remembers a time when he could buy coffee and a doughnut for a quarter, right there at the Egg & I diner, decades ago under a different name.
“Do we need a revolution? I don’t know, we need something,” he said.
Kelleher says he might consider voting for Trump again, despite his shortcomings, and depending on who he were up against.
“I voted for this guy because how long do I have left?” he said. “I wanted to see something different.”
Sarah Robertson can be reached at srobertson@gazettenet.com