The Washington Post featured a Georgia couple who is losing faith in President Donald Trump, and … it’s just really freakin’ frustrating further evidence of how much work we need to do to save this country from the MAGA scourge.
Jessie Meadows runs a flower shop. Her husband, Carter, runs a funeral home. And they’re a hot mess.
The phone that used to ring all day during Trump’s first term sits mostly quiet. Customers are still reluctant to spend on an “extra” such as flowers in her corner of small-town Georgia. A box of faux berries from China recently arrived at the shop with a note explaining that they cost 17 percent more because of Trump’s tariffs.
What happened during Trump’s first term? The COVID-19 pandemic.
Yeah, the funeral business was popping back then. That wasn’t a good thing.
Meadows was starting to question the president’s ability to keep his word — and not just on the economy. She didn’t like his dismissive attitude toward MAGA Republicans who wanted to see the government’s full files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after Trump said last year that he was “inclined” to release information on Epstein.
She isn’t anti-MAGA, to be clear. She just doesn’t like Trump’s efforts to suppress the Epstein files in which he (allegedly) features prominently.
Carter, 37, who runs the local funeral home, also voted for Trump last year, believing he would be good for the economy. Now tariffs are pushing up prices for one of his suppliers, and Carter isn’t sure how long he can hold off raising his own rates. The tariffs, he said, “seemed unplanned and childish.”
If only Carter had known about Trump’s obsession with tariffs—the thing candidate Trump ran on as the solution to pretty much everything. Tariffs on China. Tariffs on Mexico. Tariffs on Europe. Steel tariffs, aluminum tariffs, auto tariffs. He even floated tariffs on countries that don’t “treat us fairly,” which basically meant the entire world in his addled mind.
Trump didn’t just dabble in tariffs: He made them his whole economic worldview. The oft-failed businessman didn’t understand global supply chains, didn’t care about consequences, and sold it all as “America First” when it was really just “everyone pays more.”
“I’m not an economist,” he added. “Probably going to hurt before it gets better.”
“But we also really don’t have a suggestion on how to fix that,” Jessie interjected. “We don’t understand enough about it.”
People tried to explain it—you add a tax on imports, that tax gets passed on to businesses, and then to consumers. It’s not that hard a concept. But Trump didn’t understand it, and neither do Jessie and Carter. The difference is, when the president doesn’t get it, the whole country pays. When his supporters don’t get it, they just keep voting to make themselves poorer.
Jessie and Carter are mostly reliable Republicans — though Jessie once made an exception for Barack Obama because she liked what he said about free community college.
I’ve been saying it: promise people free shit. Life is hard. The government should make it easier. Trump always got this, and promised to lower prices on Day 1. He didn’t actually need a plan. He just needed to signal alignment with people’s concerns about the cost of living.
Related | Trump has a knack for good politics—and Democrats should copy it
Here is a deeply MAGA voter who still voted for Obama—a Black Democrat!—because he promised free stuff. And like I’ve been saying, don’t hide the benefits in the tax code where no one can see it. Don’t make it a child tax credit—mail a freakin’ check, with the Democratic president’s name on it. Deliver on that free community college promise. Work on ways to tangibly lower the cost of living, and voters might start trusting Democrats again.
They were quickly drawn, in 2016, to Trump’s pitch that he was a political outsider who would run the country like a business.
You know what businesses don’t do? They don’t subsidize unprofitable services like rural hospitals, rural schools, rural broadband, rural postal service, or rural Social Security offices.
You know what businesses also don’t do? They don’t put a serial failure like Donald Trump in charge. His many bankruptcies weren’t a secret. His supporters just chose to ignore them.
Their 2016 votes for Trump seemed to pay off: Business was great, and the flower shop got an extra van. Under President Joe Biden, they experienced soaring inflation and — last September — a hurricane that hit their rural county hard.
Are they … blaming Biden for Hurricane Helene? But to be clear, inflation wasn’t some random act of Democratic incompetence. It was the global economy reopening after a pandemic Trump mismanaged into catastrophe. So yes, business was “great” when COVID filled up funeral homes, then that business was upset when Biden guided the country out of the wreckage. Trump’s incompetence boosted their bottom line. Biden’s competence made them grumble.
The Meadowses still liked a lot of what Trump was doing. He was following through on his promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
MAGA loves to hurt people. That’s what they vote for—punishment, cruelty, suffering—as long as it’s someone else paying the price. The minute the pain circles back to them, suddenly it’s “childish” and “unplanned.”
The piece goes deeper into the couple’s Epstein fixation, their gripes about bombing Iran, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s post-Charlie Kirk assassination rant about “hate speech.” Then there’s Jessie’s absurd claim that MAGA doesn’t “depend on one man,” and that if Trump “abandons the movement, then we can continue on without him.”
Related | Even Charlie Kirk would’ve disagreed with Pam Bondi about ‘hate speech’
But you can’t have a cult without a leader.
And yet their doubts feel so sacrilegious they won’t even share them with their 9-year-old son.
“I don’t want to mess up a 9-year-old’s version of the president of the United States by saying, I’m not happy that the president is doing this, this, this,” Jessie told the Post. “That’s not something the 9-year-old needs to be worried about.”
They wouldn’t want to stop their kid from joining the MAGA cult someday.
The Washington Post featured a Georgia couple who is losing faith in President Donald Trump, and … it’s just really freakin’ frustrating further evidence of how much work we need to do to save this country from the MAGA scourge.
Jessie Meadows runs a flower shop. Her husband, Carter, runs a funeral home. And they’re a hot mess.
The phone that used to ring all day during Trump’s first term sits mostly quiet. Customers are still reluctant to spend on an “extra” such as flowers in her corner of small-town Georgia. A box of faux berries from China recently arrived at the shop with a note explaining that they cost 17 percent more because of Trump’s tariffs.
What happened during Trump’s first term? The COVID-19 pandemic.
Yeah, the funeral business was popping back then. That wasn’t a good thing.
Meadows was starting to question the president’s ability to keep his word — and not just on the economy. She didn’t like his dismissive attitude toward MAGA Republicans who wanted to see the government’s full files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after Trump said last year that he was “inclined” to release information on Epstein.
She isn’t anti-MAGA, to be clear. She just doesn’t like Trump’s efforts to suppress the Epstein files in which he (allegedly) features prominently.
Carter, 37, who runs the local funeral home, also voted for Trump last year, believing he would be good for the economy. Now tariffs are pushing up prices for one of his suppliers, and Carter isn’t sure how long he can hold off raising his own rates. The tariffs, he said, “seemed unplanned and childish.”
Supporters arrive before Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on Oct. 19, 2024, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
If only Carter had known about Trump’s obsession with tariffs—the thing candidate Trump ran on as the solution to pretty much everything. Tariffs on China. Tariffs on Mexico. Tariffs on Europe. Steel tariffs, aluminum tariffs, auto tariffs. He even floated tariffs on countries that don’t “treat us fairly,” which basically meant the entire world in his addled mind.
Trump didn’t just dabble in tariffs: He made them his whole economic worldview. The oft-failed businessman didn’t understand global supply chains, didn’t care about consequences, and sold it all as “America First” when it was really just “everyone pays more.”
“I’m not an economist,” he added. “Probably going to hurt before it gets better.”
“But we also really don’t have a suggestion on how to fix that,” Jessie interjected. “We don’t understand enough about it.”
People tried to explain it—you add a tax on imports, that tax gets passed on to businesses, and then to consumers. It’s not that hard a concept. But Trump didn’t understand it, and neither do Jessie and Carter. The difference is, when the president doesn’t get it, the whole country pays. When his supporters don’t get it, they just keep voting to make themselves poorer.
Jessie and Carter are mostly reliable Republicans — though Jessie once made an exception for Barack Obama because she liked what he said about free community college.
I’ve been saying it: promise people free shit. Life is hard. The government should make it easier. Trump always got this, and promised to lower prices on Day 1. He didn’t actually need a plan. He just needed to signal alignment with people’s concerns about the cost of living.
Related | Trump has a knack for good politics—and Democrats should copy it
Here is a deeply MAGA voter who still voted for Obama—a Black Democrat!—because he promised free stuff. And like I’ve been saying, don’t hide the benefits in the tax code where no one can see it. Don’t make it a child tax credit—mail a freakin’ check, with the Democratic president’s name on it. Deliver on that free community college promise. Work on ways to tangibly lower the cost of living, and voters might start trusting Democrats again.
They were quickly drawn, in 2016, to Trump’s pitch that he was a political outsider who would run the country like a business.
You know what businesses don’t do? They don’t subsidize unprofitable services like rural hospitals, rural schools, rural broadband, rural postal service, or rural Social Security offices.
You know what businesses also don’t do? They don’t put a serial failure like Donald Trump in charge. His many bankruptcies weren’t a secret. His supporters just chose to ignore them.
Their 2016 votes for Trump seemed to pay off: Business was great, and the flower shop got an extra van. Under President Joe Biden, they experienced soaring inflation and — last September — a hurricane that hit their rural county hard.
Are they … blaming Biden for Hurricane Helene? But to be clear, inflation wasn’t some random act of Democratic incompetence. It was the global economy reopening after a pandemic Trump mismanaged into catastrophe. So yes, business was “great” when COVID filled up funeral homes, then that business was upset when Biden guided the country out of the wreckage. Trump’s incompetence boosted their bottom line. Biden’s competence made them grumble.
The Meadowses still liked a lot of what Trump was doing. He was following through on his promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
MAGA loves to hurt people. That’s what they vote for—punishment, cruelty, suffering—as long as it’s someone else paying the price. The minute the pain circles back to them, suddenly it’s “childish” and “unplanned.”
The piece goes deeper into the couple’s Epstein fixation, their gripes about bombing Iran, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s post-Charlie Kirk assassination rant about “hate speech.” Then there’s Jessie’s absurd claim that MAGA doesn’t “depend on one man,” and that if Trump “abandons the movement, then we can continue on without him.”
Related | Even Charlie Kirk would’ve disagreed with Pam Bondi about ‘hate speech’
But you can’t have a cult without a leader.
And yet their doubts feel so sacrilegious they won’t even share them with their 9-year-old son.
“I don’t want to mess up a 9-year-old’s version of the president of the United States by saying, I’m not happy that the president is doing this, this, this,” Jessie told the Post. “That’s not something the 9-year-old needs to be worried about.”
They wouldn’t want to stop their kid from joining the MAGA cult someday.