Trump Agenda May Lead to Buyer’s Remorse Among His Voters

A Hispanic Trump backer who is regretting his vote after a horrific encounter with ICE. Photo: NBC News4

A local Washington, D.C., TV news reporter has a story that we are almost certainly going to hear often once the Trump administration’s mass-deportation initiative intensifies:

A naturalized Hispanic man says he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who were looking for another person on a deportation order, and now the man is questioning his vote for President Donald Trump. …

[Jensy] Machado said he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men when he was stopped by ICE agents on Lomond Drive in Manassas, a short distance from his home. He said he was confused by what was happening, why agents surrounded the pickup truck. 

“And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know,” Machado told Telemundo 44’s Rosbelis Quinoñez, who first reported his story. “Everything was really fast.” …

“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”

Turns out the ICE agents had erroneously been given this American citizen’s address, but since he looked Hispanic, they figured they’d act and ask questions later. He was released after finally being allowed to show his driver’s license, but “the two men with him were taken into custody. He does not know why.”

The conclusion he reached isn’t surprising: “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be the things, you know, like … just go against criminals, not every Hispanic-looking, like, that they will assume that we are all illegals.”

If this happened with trained ICE agents, it’s going to happen a lot more often when local law enforcement officers are pulled into the mass-deportation effort. At that point, the big and much-discussed improvements Republicans made among Hispanic voters in 2024 could begin melting away in the heat of widespread ethnic profiling.

But the possibility of buyer’s remorse among Trump voters isn’t limited to Hispanic voters who didn’t believe the rabid hostility of Republicans toward illegal immigrants might affect them. After a campaign that so very successfully divided Americans into an aggrieved and deserving “us” battling an privileged and undeserving “them,” it’s going to become apparent that the line between “us” and “them” isn’t so clear and can be shifted as quickly as a DOGE raid on a federal agency.

For example, exit polls showed military veterans favoring Trump over Kamala Harris by a 65 percent to 34 percent margin, and Trump made an even more conspicuous display than ever of his alleged super-patriotism and love for those wearing the country’s uniform. But these pro-Trump voters probably weren’t expecting the administration to instantly fire thousands of veterans who have previously been given a preference in federal hiring, or to demand that the Veterans Administration dismiss 80,000 workers engaged in providing veterans with health care and other benefits.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, which likely reassured seniors (representing 28 percent of the 2024 electorate) that his attacks on “the deep state” wouldn’t affect them personally. But now Elon Musk’s DOGE is massively reducing the administrative staff required to ensure Social Security and related benefits can be accessed smoothly, and it’s very clear Trump’s congressional Republican allies cannot implement his budgetary plans without major “savings” from Medicaid. Those who voted for Trump may feel deceived or betrayed.

Trump did conspicuously well among self-identified Catholic voters in 2024. Almost immediately, the new administration picked a nasty fight with Catholic bishops over the services the church provides to undocumented immigrants and its insistence on treating them with dignity. At least some Catholic Trump voters may realize that immigrants aren’t the only targets of MAGA rage.

Above all, millions of Americans voted for Trump at least in part because they were concerned about grocery and gasoline prices and believed his promises that he’d act quickly to reduce them to pre-pandemic levels. Instead, his economic policies have focused on imposing broad-based tariffs sure to raise consumer prices while inviting retaliation that could blight the lives of many producers of American goods and services (notably farmers).

All these potential developments are worth watching closely as Trump’s agenda unfolds and begins stimulating a public backlash. At present, Americans are split right down the middle on the 47th president’s job performance with a steady downward trend since his inauguration. For the most part, the country is divided precisely as it was on Election Day. But with every day that passes, memories of Joe Biden’s or Kamala Harris’s shortcomings will fade and Donald Trump will be vulnerable to the unhappiness of Americans about their government and conditions of life. It won’t take that many 2024 Trump voters deciding they made a mistake to tilt the balance of public opinion decisively against him. Even if the president himself no longer cares about popularity (and his ego probably requires that he imagine himself as revered), his Republican allies, particularly in the U.S. House with its fragile GOP majority, probably do. They know voters who feel betrayed tend to be highly motivated to make their anger known at the ballot box.