Donald Trump was in my region a few days ago, and I couldn't have imagined a more unlikelier venue for this brash-speaking political operative.
Picture this; the city he spoke in has a population of about 100,000, consisting of a 75% Latino majority, with about 15% white and maybe 6% African-American (these are ADOS black people we're talking about, which stands for American Descendants of Slavery. These are natural born American citizens who can trace their ancestors back to the African slaves who were brought here prior to 1865 when President Lincoln freed the slaves. Not recent black immigrants arriving from other countries).
The arena (which I've been too), seats roughly 9000 people at max capacity, had to be about 98% white, with a smattering of curious Latinos, and the even rarer lone black attendee. The campaign was wise to place a few of the Hispanic in the audience directly behind Trump when he was speaking. Having watched a few of his events, I was interested to see how the would respond when he began demonizing immigrants from south of the border as he is wont to do when pontificating at his events.
There are people from all over Latin America in that city, with a sizable Venezuelan cohort among them. This is a violent, crumbling area which the white (and many black) people started fleeing from over 30 years ago when the migrants began arriving due to the federal government settling them in this area. The "migrant reception center" has been the subject of much ire from the citizen residents, and while it was FINALLY shut down (after many protests from the native residents), the damage had already been done.
All of the things Trump rails about concerning migrants; shootings, stabbings, rapes, human trafficking, drug gangs, were mostly unknown in that area until the feds began waving them in. I've known people who are now deceased at the hands of some of those immigrants, in a city that was once one of the safest in America, but sadly isn't anymore. So if you wonder why some of the most unlikely people might still consider voting for Trump over Harris, at least in THIS area, that's why.
- The criminal charges? I don't care.
- Jan 6th? I don't care.
- "Grab em by the pussy?" I don't care. (I do, but compared to the crime here?)
- Friends with dictators? I don't care.
- Money from his daddy? I don't care.
- A felon? I don't care. (hell, half the people I know are felons!)
Remember who I am. in 2016 and 2020, I donated to and supported BERNIE FUCKING SANDERS for President. I'm still a Green New Deal, AOC progressive (with some conservative spots) who absolutely HATED Donald Trump during BOTH of those elections (doubt me?, go back and look at my tweets). I cheered when he was defeated in 2020. However, people that I knew kept getting killed by migrants. I kept seeing immigrants running white and black American citizens out of jobs here, and bragging about running us all out and "getting theirs."
I saw BILLIONS being sent overseas while watching American military veterans freezing to death in the winter cold while migrants were being taking care of. That shit is enough to make even the most liberal progressive to give someone like Donald Trump a second look. And, you gotta give the guy credit, they're throwing EVERYTHING at him.
Day after day I see nothing but glowingly positive stories by Harris and multiple negative articles about Trump. You get the impression that if she does win, it'll be because they had their thumb on the scale for her the entire time. Personally, I think Trump is set to juuuust lose, but if he manages to pull an unlikely victory out of all this, it'll be a miracle in spite of absolutely everything they're doing to ensure that he loses.
He should be 30 points behind, but it's still close because people can see what's going on around them in their own cities and towns.
I have never voted for a republican in my life, but... hhhhmmm...
When you have a gun to your head, you don't care who knocks it away.
Nobody gives a crap about how brash a politician is when a friendly store owner that you knew is gunned down in front of his wife and kids by an illegal alien who shouldn't have been here in the first place. When America military veterans are living homeless, shivering in the winter cold, while "asylum seekers" are staying in hotels in NYC and being given debit cards loaded with cash to spend in area stores.
I see these homeless veterans (none of whom are receiving debit cards from the cities in this region), all of the time, and try to help them as best I can. But hopefully you can understand why the American citizens seeing this shit happen are rightfully angry seeing foreigners being taken care of while our own people are abandoned.
I get it.
Here's a video from just a couple of years ago where the interviewer was interrupted trying to speak with a disabled homeles veteran in Las Vegas. Unbelievable.
A lot of those people who have been murdered by migrants in this area were real flesh-and-blood people. Good folks that I knew and grew up with, and now they're dead, including my own grandmother at the hands of an immigrant who asked her for food.
So it was interesting to watch the reaction of some of the Latinos in the crowd when Trump started making his case for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. I noticed that in several sections they began to leave the venue as Trump was making his points.
But other Latinos remained in their seats and kept on cheering Donald Trump. Here's an interesting article explaining the Latino vote in that city, and why some still support him despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Those of us who live in this region know well the challenges of dealing with the tsunami of violence that accompanied the arrival of these new people in the small cities and towns that were relatively safe before they came here.
No one had been beheaded. Not one of our police officers had ever been killed in the line of duty. I could go on and on but you get the picture. We don't give a rats ass who Trump or Harris is banging or how they make their money. We want to know which one of them will do SOMETHING, anything, about the waves of new arrivals inundating these small towns, taking up job after job from Americans, and killing our people? That's why this election is still close just weeks out from election day.
At this point I have absolutely NO confidence that Kamala Harris is that person. None. If anything, she'll open the door for even more of them. I don't know what I'm going to do. I may just write in a vote for RFK Jr, or as many of my neighbors are considering (including a SURPRISING number of black and white democrat men who have lost jobs to migrants), hold my nose and vote for Trump.
What would cause people who should be natural Harris supporters to begin considering switching their vote to Donald Trump? Because he's the only one that will actually do something about the problem. You can't even get a bed at any of our homeless shelters because they are filled to capacity with, wait for it...immigrants.
The fact that I'm even CONSIDERING voting for this nutjob should tell you just how bad things are here.
The American people are suffering and have had enough. With all of the money being spent on foreigners and wars in other countries, does anyone give a damn about us?