I’m with Trump: Stories from a Swing State
John R, age 20, grew up in Chicago. Now he’s a cook in Greenville, Ohio.
“I’m with Trump. There’s some things that Bernie does that I agree with, but the Bernie supporters just want everything handed to them. They think they should get everything for free. It’s not OK that it’s us working and paying for them when they’re not working. They get houses for free and they don’t have to work — that’s not right.
I know a lot of people in Greenville who live off the state, and that’s where half my taxes go. I get $200 taken out of each pay check for taxes — that’s a lot.
I like Trump because he’s a self-made billionaire and he has money to help. Hopefully more people will start getting more jobs, sort of like Obama did. He brought a lot of jobs, hopefully those will keep going up.
I don’t agree with Trump on everything, like “Oh, just kick ’em all out”. It’s going to be a long process, but at least slow it down a little bit, start focusing more on our country, cus you know ISIS and all them are cooking up something as we speak and you never know when something is gonna happen. More illegal people coming over isn’t gonna help.
Every solution that they have has failed so far. I don’t think building a wall will really help, because there’s a Mexican border and that doesn’t help either.
I don’t know about the Mexicans and all them, but the Muslims, he has a big problem with them for some reason and I think he’ll slowly start taking them out. Like all the Syrian refugees and that stuff, I don’t believe in that. Because they’re all from the same area, one (terrorist) can just slip in with them. You can’t trust any of them.
I think the media eggs Trump on a lot too. The other candidates start blurting out random things and they just start going at him. The media is the one that causes them to start talking like that. The other day they started talking about Trump’s hands…that don’t need to be said. They all argue too much anyway. We just don’t have any good candidates. Trump’s all right, but after that who would you choose?
Trump sounds more powerful than all the others.
I don’t like how they compare Trump to Hitler. Just because he doesn’t want illegal people coming in doesn’t make him racist. That’s not a color, it’s illegal, there’s a difference. There’s plenty of white people that are sick of white people stuff too. Going into schools shooting…that’s a lot of white people.
Trump has a family and has his own life, he has black friends. He’s not racist. Hitler was racist, Trump’s not.
What do I hope for? A good country, no terrorist attacks, for that to slow down. For people to get more jobs, for our country to be better. We’re so much in debt.
This story is part 6 of a photographic exploration of ordinary Americans and their reasons for supporting a controversial candidate.
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© All text & images copyright Talitha Brauer
