Donald Trump is not a bully.
He’s sensitive.
Women have him all wrong.
The billionaire understands the average, everyday worker.
He’s not politically correct, but there’s no need to apologize for what he says or how he says it. After all, Rosie “O’Donnell is a b----.”
Trump’s familiarity with bankruptcy courts, cheap imports and foreign labor attest to his business acumen. The country needs to be run more like that, “more like a business” and less like a “nanny state.”
In the first in a series of conversations exploring the views of voters, the Beacon Journal listened to Trump supporters from Summit and Portage counties in mid-January. The group — white, four male and one female — adamantly oppose tax hikes, big government, “free handouts,” unions and Democrats, although they’ll make an occasional exception for local Democrats they know.
And they were as straight-forward as their candidate: “Republicans have no balls …” “Politicians are liars …” “Donald Trump doesn’t owe anybody.” “Donald Trump comes out and says it the way it is …” “He’s a street fighter.” “He deals with average everyday people.”
He’s bucked the Republican Party, Fox News, big-money donors and every logical step to the White House.
Trump doesn’t play nice. He plays to win.
Closet supporters
The two youngest in the group — fathers raised Democrats in union households — have formed such deep conservative beliefs that they question the purity of the Republican Party.
The oldest participants, one working past 65, are enjoying Trump’s resurrection of Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority” and the big-tent, free-market philosophies of Ronald Reagan.
What binds them is a disdain for politicians, special interests, big government and the two parties that control the show.
However, talking about their candidate publicly can be fraught with peril.
After the Beacon Journal published an invitation to fans of Bernie Sanders and Trump to join a conversation, 28 Sanders supporters quickly responded.
Only four Trump supporters volunteered, four more were recruited, and five attended.
The low turnout for Trump spoke as much of a distrust in media as it did about the fear of demonizing, they said. While they willingly talk to pollsters, they are cautious around friends and family.
“I know a lot of people [who] like him, they’re just afraid to say,” said the only participant unwilling to use her name.
Though a Trump bumper sticker adorns her car, the woman, in her sixties, will not speak publicly about Trump until two things happen in Ohio’s March 15 primary: 1. Trump wins, coaxing his supporters out of the shadows. 2. She’s elected to a position in the Ohio Republican Party, whose leaders favor Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president.
“For anyone who wants to be active in partisan politics to come out and say I’m for Donald Trump … the bells of death are ringing,” said Dave McCann, a retired county employee.
“That’s the establishment we have in our area,” said Doug Guska, a 36-year-old father and real estate investor.
‘Right hook’
Political correctness muzzles people from stating brutal truths, they said. The bloodier, the better.
“What did he do in the second debate or the third debate?” asked Brian Perek, a father from Brimfield who works in the oil and gas industry. “He came out there — they didn’t even get done calling people’s names — and he just took a swing right at someone. I don’t even know who it was.”
“Hah!” said Bert Alpeter, a Bath resident who, at 67, won’t give up his sales job because “you have to pay your damn taxes.”
“I mean just a complete right hook,” Perek, 36, continued. The others wriggled with delight. “It was like a hockey game, right? He just came out there and took the right hook and guess what? Everybody with a TV on was paying attention to him.”
But when they are in polite company, out of necessity, a different set of rules emerges.
“I sing in the church choir and I let it be known that I’m a Trump supporter,” said McCann, mimicking the oohs and ahhs that typically follow his political confession.
“I know. I get that, too,” the woman said.
“But you know, Donald Trump is not my personality. I mean I have another dimension to my life other than politics,” said McCann, who chooses his words carefully so as not to offend others or disparage fellow Republicans, per Reagan’s advice.
McCann, 61, of Akron, grew up during the Vietnam era with a liberal brother. During the 2012 presidential, he found himself quietly listening to Democrats blast Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney. In his attempts to defend Trump, McCann has responded not in anger but by doubling down on empathy.
“Life is very important to me, and jobs and progress are very important to me. And very quietly and with great civility — because these are my friends we’re talking about — but if you put the Trump name out there, I won’t know if they’ll have a different opinion of me now. I’m still singing in the choir, mind you,” he said.
Open to interpretation
The group praised the marketer’s brazen style while recognizing that it can be difficult for some to appreciate, let alone understand.
Having an ear for business and conservatism helps.
Take his calls to block or deport undocumented Mexican immigrants — he’s called them rapists — and Syrian refugees, who the group said are mostly men, contrary to reports that they include women and children.
“That’s a business answer. That’s how he runs his business. That’s all he did. People who aren’t in business, it didn’t register to them,” said Perek.
“Of course all the sound bites and all the news media: ‘Oh, he said we shouldn’t allow these immigrants in,’ ” Alpeter said.
Then there’s the denigrating comments about women, for which he was taken to task in the first Republican debate by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. She asked whether his references to various women as “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals” were indicative of presidential “temperament.”
Trump suggested Kelly’s questions were unfair and a result of hormonal issues.
Asked about the exchange, the Trump supporters expressed disgust with Kelly.
“Totally unacceptable,” said McCann.
“And I used to love her,” the woman said.
“She took a shot at him — she deserved what he gave her,” said Alpeter of Trump’s reference to Kelly’s menstrual cycle.
“For a journalist from the Syracuse School of Journalism to do that was beyond the pale,” McCann concluded.
But this is the baggage that comes with liking Trump.
“‘He hates women. Why do you like him? He hates women,’” the woman said her friends ask. “What do you say to that? ‘He doesn’t.’ ”
The group admired Trump’s relentless, uncompromising behavior, recalling one-by-one the things they often think but, until Trump came along, have never heard a candidate say.
“Rosie O’Donnell is a b----,” said the woman.
“Let’s follow the law,” said McCann.
“That’s a good one,” the woman responded.
“Yeeeaaaahhhh. Yeah,” Alpeter said.
Anti-politicians
Despite political ideologies that couldn’t be further apart, Guska acknowledged a connection with Sanders supporters: Disgust with big-money and partisan politics.
Alpeter was most outspoken on the disgust factor.
“They’ll lie and they’ll be deceitful and, you know, it goes back again to Americans don’t trust politicians,” Alpeter said. “And that’s the trouble with politicians. They have for too long come out and said, ‘Well, we’re going to do this.’ And they get elected and they don’t do that. They lie to you.”
Enter Trump, the divisive. Never, since entering the race in June have more Republicans loved him or more Americans reviled him. Real Clear Politics, which averages polls, puts Trump ahead with 35 percent of Republican primary voters. As more evidence of the disgust factor, anti-establishment Texas Sen. Ted Cruz follows behind at 20 percent.
Troubling for Trump, though, are the strong feelings against him. Polls show that about 60 percent of all Americans view him unfavorably. Overseas, 578,163 Brits had signed a petition by the end of January to ban him from Britain.
His supporters, however, see it differently.
“He’s a street fighter, you know. In Manhattan you’ve got to get down in the trenches with people and be a street fighter. And that appeals to average everyday people like us because we deal with everybody everyday,” said Guska, who joked that more Trump supporters would have showed up for the discussion if they weren’t all working.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @DougLivingstonABJ.