FFrom his retirement farm in rural Pennsylvania, Roger Williams has been keeping up with the latest news about his favorite presidential candidate, Donald Trump, including his remarks about “one day becoming a dictator.” .
Asked about the remark, Williams, 67, responded: “One day, don’t get it twisted.” The remarks heightened concerns about what Trump would do if he successfully returns to the White House in next year’s election. Measures to dismantle American democracy.
“He wanted to stand firm and decide something needed to be done. That’s what he meant,” Williams said, sitting at a Fourth Street bar in West Hazleton, a town in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania. A small town that held the key to Trump winning the state and the entire presidency.
In the seven years since his 2016 election victory transformed the Republican Party, Americans have become accustomed to Trump saying arrogant, bizarre and insulting things in public, but his remarks about wanting to be a dictator have been met with mixed responses.
Polls show the former president has a landslide lead in next year’s Republican presidential nomination, even as he faces federal charges over well-documented attempts to overturn the 2020 election, when voters rejected his re-election bid and used Joe Biden replaced him.
Media have reported that Trump is considering purging thousands of civil servants and replacing them with ideological loyalists, using the Justice Department to exact revenge on former officials who betrayed him, and deploying the military to crack down on protesters if he wins reelection in 2024. . Trump publicly expressed his desire for absolute power earlier this month when he took questions from conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity at an Iowa town hall.
“Tonight you promise America that no matter what, you will not abuse your power to retaliate against anyone?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” the former president replied.
“I love this guy,” Trump continued, referring to Hannity. “He said, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, except for the first day. We’re closing the borders, we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. From then on, I didn’t He’s a dictator.”
Days later, Trump hammered home that point while speaking at the annual gala of the New York Young Republicans Club. “I said I wanted to be a dictator. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I wanted a wall and I wanted to drill, drill, drill,” he told the sympathetic crowd.
Enemies of the former president have seized on the remarks to hammer home their case that he is too dangerous to retain office. “The biggest threat Trump poses is to our democracy, because if we lose our democracy, we lose everything,” Biden said at a campaign reception in Los Angeles.
The most important thing is the judgment of voters in Pennsylvania and other places on Trump’s remarks. Trump won the Keystone State in 2016 but lost to Biden four years later, one of a handful of swing states expected to decide next year’s presidential race. His arrival on the political scene left a lasting mark on Luzerne County, which once leaned Democratic but decisively supported Trump in his first presidential election and has generally done well for Republicans in the county since. .
Several voters in the county who spoke to the Guardian said they remained uneasy about Trump, but fans of the former president said concerns about his desire for authoritarianism were exaggerated.
“This is all nonsense,” retiree Joe Belletiere, 74, said of the former president’s comments. “They took it out of context.”
Belletier, a former Democrat who switched parties when Trump first campaigned in 2016, now describes himself as a “staunch Republican.” Belletier meets friends in Hazleton every morning for coffee at McDonald’s. In Hazleton, a mid-sized city adjacent to smaller, more conservative West Hazleton, Belletier said Trump was simply demonstrating his determination to fulfill long-standing campaign promises, such as building a wall. along the Mexican border and add to the country’s already record oil production.
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“He will order the wall to be torn down and oil to be opened up,” he said.
Richard Yanac, 77, who sat nearby, said he planned to vote for Trump again, hoping he would lower prices that have risen during Biden’s presidency due to a host of factors, including an economy reeling from disaster. Wider recovery. Caused by Covid-19.
“I don’t think he will become a dictator,” Janak said. “I’m a Trump supporter, and I hope when he comes in, he’ll close the border, start drilling, and bring prices down.”
Recent polls have shown a tight race between Trump and Biden, with some finding the incumbent trailing among Pennsylvania voters. They also show that voters are unhappy with both men, a feeling that is evident among retirees at McDonald’s in Hazleton.
“We have Biden because of Trump, and we have Trump because of Biden. I don’t want any of them to run,” said 74-year-old Bob Capparell. A lifelong conservative, he supports Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and Trump foe, and may also support Nikki Haley, the former president’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Asked if he thought Trump could become a dictator, Kaparel responded: “He absolutely will. You will never take him out of office, never.”
While Trump’s victory in Luzerne County and across Pennsylvania in 2016 was one of many shocks he delivered to Democrats that year, there is evidence that his staying power has waned. The county backed him again in 2020, but support fell by a percentage point, with Democratic candidates winning four County Council seats in last month’s election.
Bob Buchman, 72, voted for Trump in 2016 because he “believed his nonsense” but backed Biden four years later. Faced with the same choice again, he would vote for Biden if he had to.
“I would pick 10 Joe Bidens and then one Donald Trump. He just lies, lies, lies,” he said. “I’m worried that if he joins now, he only has four years to get revenge.”
