Trump’s Fans Condemn Violence, but They Aren’t About To Blame Him
Eddie Emerson worked his fly fishing pole back and forth, tossing his line into a pond in West Texas, searching for stocked trout and an answer to questions on how he felt about the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump…
Eddie Emerson worked his fly fishing pole back and forth, tossing his line into a pond in West Texas, searching for stocked trout and an answer to questions on how he felt about the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
A backer of President Donald Trump, Emerson said he disliked the violence he saw on TV on Wednesday: people overturning barricades, clashing with police and swarming the building in Washington that houses the Senate and House of Representatives. But echoing a sentiment held by many Trump supporters, Emerson expressed frustration with what he called the hypocrisy of those who condemned the riots but turned a blind eye to violence at Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
“What about Portland?” he asked, pointing to the months of protest and mayhem in Oregon’s largest city. “When it’s the left behind the violence, then it’s just them expressing their voice, their creativity.”
In two dozen interviews with Trump backers across deeply conservative slices of Texas and Georgia, they condemned Wednesday’s violence, but at the same time did not hold the president responsible.
Rather, they said they understood the anger behind it, expressing their own anger with what they believe was a fraudulent election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
They blamed the violence on left wing protesters – without any evidence – and expressed little hope that the deeply divided country would unify anytime soon.
And none were prepared to abandon Trump, who has insisted he prevailed in the Nov. 3 election, making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud that were rejected by the courts.
‘THE SWAMP’
While Emerson and others said they accepted that Biden would take power on Jan. 20, they also said they would continue to support Trump.
“Trump isn’t a politician,” said Emerson, 67, who was fishing in Lamesa, a town of 9,500 in the middle of West Texas cotton country. “We sent him to Washington to get rid of the swamp, but the swamp got rid of him. And as far as I’m concerned, the swamp now includes the Republican Party, along with the Democrats.”