Here’s What They Think of Donald Trump in Lordstown

TNS via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A couple of years ago General Motors announced that it was closing its assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The Guardian has a nice piece today about how Donald Trump’s support is holding up there. There’s this:

In July 2017, Trump spoke in Youngstown and told the crowd that on his way in from the airport, he had seen the carcasses of too many factories and mills. He bemoaned Ohio’s loss of manufacturing jobs, but then boldly assured the crowd: “They’re all coming back!” He next told his audience, many of them workers worried about plant closings: “Don’t move! Don’t sell your house!”

Laid-off GM Lordstown workers still rail about that speech. Many moved to other cities to find work; many lost money selling their homes….Tammy Vennetti voted for Trump in 2016, largely because her older sister, a retired GM worker, kept urging her to….She is still fuming about his do-not-sell-your home remarks in Youngstown” “He promised that nobody was going to have to sell their homes. He said they [GM] were going to stay. That’s why I can’t vote for him this year.”

And this from Dave Green, a union official:

Soon after taking office, Trump relaxed fuel-efficiency standards for cars, and that, Green realized, could doom the plant, which made compact, fuel-efficient Chevy Cruzes. “He wasn’t in office long before he announced he would do away with the Cafe [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] standards,” Green said. “Auto manufacturers here had to build so many small cars to balance for all the SUV’s. When Cafe went away, Trump did the workers of Lordstown a huge disservice.” He doesn’t blame Trump for the plant closing, but says Trump accelerated GM’s decision, noting that GM much preferred building SUV’s and trucks to lower-profit small cars.

But there’s also this:

Mike Yakim, who worked as a team leader in Lordstown’s paint department, also backed Trump in 2016 and remains a big fan. “I had my reservations about him. I know he’s not a saint,” Yakim said. “But I had a good feeling about him. Trump seemed to be for the little guy.”

….“I saw what Biden has done to the economy, what he’s done in 47 years in office: his support of Nafta, that pretty much gutted the auto industry, and his rallying for the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership].” He asks why Biden didn’t do more to stop GM from closing its Wilmington plant in 2009 or stop Chrysler from shutting its plant there in 2008.

Anyway, it’s a good look at a cross section of working-class voters who are both for and against Trump. It’s worth a read.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate