Backing Trump: Stories from a Swing State
Bob C. owns an industrial contracting business in Cincinnati, Ohio. He’s 60 years old. He supports Donald Trump.
“The politicians that go into Washington, and leave their $150,000 house, go to Washington for four years, come back and they’re living in a mansion. How does that happen? Not because a senator gets paid that much money, because they don’t. They’re all crooked.
Well, Trump’s not a politician. He’s not being groomed to spit out a bunch of answers that people want to hear.
The biggest thing that makes me trust Trump is that he just doesn’t need to do this. He’s not looking to gain a life in politics. He’s not looking to gain money, respect, notoriety, anything else. He’s already got it. I think he sees a real problem and he sees a serious issue for his kids growing up. I think he sees it as a big challenge and something he can fix.
I would like to be able to run my company easier than it is now. I would like to provide my fellow workers with a better life. I used to be able to pay 100% of their health insurance and I was very proud of the fact that I could. Now, I had to cut out family plans all together. For a while, I was paying 100% of the person that actually worked for me, but couldn’t cover his wife or kids, which I used to. Now, I even have to ask him to contribute 10% of his own because of Obamacare.
I sit around here and used to think, the only way out of this is if God sends Jesus back to the earth and just ends it all, and starts over, or ends it all — period. Because it’s just so bad, there’s no fixing it. What we’re going to do is next election cycle, we’re just gonna put another politician in, and he’ll be doing the same thing.
That’s the one chance we might have with Trump. To set a reset button on the entire country.”
This story is part 1 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.
> > Part 2 > >
© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer
