Anger, betrayal and fear as America braces for the midterm elections
“I think it’s a civil war,” Zach Scherer told me.
We were sitting on the back of his Trump-branded pick-up truck earlier this week when he made the prediction.
“I think that’s the only thing that’s going to bring America back together after this election if we lose.”
Civil war? When I moved to America a year ago, I recall people raising this fear. I remember thinking they were mad. How could anyone possibly believe the ‘world’s greatest democracy’, as it’s sometimes fondly described, could be heading for civil war?
Mark Stone talks to Zach Scherer and Corey Check
I’ve reported from numerous failed or failing states over the years. It seemed nonsensical to suggest that the United States of America could be among them.
Well, a year on, my view is shifting and I am profoundly concerned.
The armies and frontlines are not formed in the traditional sense. But make no mistake, there are armies and there are frontlines. The fault lines are alarmingly deep. It would be wrong to think America can just muddle its way through this inflection point in its history.
Recent polling suggests that a growing number of Americans believe political violence is acceptable. Just last week the husband of the nation’s third most senior politician, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in their home. Police say she was the target.
On the same day as the attack, authorities warned that threats of violence against politicians nationwide had massively increased.
The nation is bitterly divided and there is one thing causing this agitation – about a third of voting-age people in this country believe the 2020 election was stolen. They believe Donald Trump won.
Doubt sown into fabric of US society
If you spent the past two years thinking this was a fringe view peddled by a former president; a con which can now be dismissed as background noise, well think again.
Doubt has been sown into the fabric of American society. People have been duped. They are dismissing the institutions on which American democracy was built. They have been told not to trust their electoral process.
Back on the pick-up truck, Mr Scherer’s friend Corey Check was angry. These two young disciples of Mr Trump firmly believe the election was stolen by Joe Biden and the ‘woke radical left’.
“Everything. Everything is at stake. America is at stake. If we lose it, our country’s going to hell…” Mr Check said.
This group of Republicans all thought Donald Trump was the rightful winner in 2020
Loyalists still believe Trump won
Rattled by their stark predictions, I sought out a different generation of Republicans hoping for a more measured, nuanced perspective.
Local campaigner Cindy Hilderbrand had invited me to meet a group of six friends and activists at the local Republican party headquarters.
My first question – how many of them thought that Mr Trump was the rightful winner in 2020? All their hands went up.
“Absolutely did win,” retired US Marine Paul Garcia said.
He was interrupted by another in the group, Cheryl Guenther: “… and it wasn’t just the election day shenanigans. It was everything leading up to that. The suppression of the news, the suppression of everything that happened, brought on by media. The media is nothing more than a Democrat arm that is helping suppress all of this information.”
To be clear, there is no evidence at all that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Audits, recounts and court cases in states across the land concluded that nothing had occurred which would have changed the result of the election. Mr Biden won by a wide margin.
Even Mr Trump’s closest aides and his own family have said he lost. Yet he persists and his loyalists believe him.
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Golfer Trump mocks White House successor Biden
Conspiracy theories spread faster than facts
Our conversation turns to the policy issues. On abortion, on crime, on drugs, on guns, on the economy, they all have perfectly legitimate conservative views. Broadly – abortion is wrong, crime and drugs are out of control, gun control is unconstitutional and the struggling economy is Mr Biden’s fault.
But here’s the problem. They believe they are failing to get their way on those policy issues not because a majority disagrees with them but because a minority stole the last election from them.
American society is siloed in echo chambers. They consume wildly partisan cable news, they believe nonsense on social media and dismiss factual reporting. Conspiracy theories spread faster than facts.
‘I think there’s a genuine threat to democracy,’ Ryan says
Threat to democracy ‘understated’
Not far away, at a rally for the local democratic party candidate, I got talking to a young Democratic Party voter, a man of similar age to Mr Scherer and Mr Check but poles apart in perspective.
Was this idea of a threat to democracy overstated, I asked.
“I think it might be understated. I think there’s a genuine threat to democracy in this country and it really scares the hell out of me,” Ryan told me.
“I don’t want to end up like what we’ve seen in Europe in the past. If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it and we need to uphold democracy to keep going, otherwise we are going to falter as well. I am worried.”
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As America heads to the polls for this midterm take on the country’s direction, the anger and the division cannot be overstated.
Reflecting on all the conversations I have had, it’s jolting and bewildering.
There is so much going on; so many issues and there is absolutely no trust for the other side. There is anger and a sense of betrayal but I felt fear too. There is a real sense that Americans on all sides don’t know what comes next or how they will react to it.
US President Donald Trump has suggested Ukraine “may not survive” the war against Russia even if American support continued.
In an interview with Fox News channel’s ‘Sunday Morning Futures’, Mr Trump was asked about his controversial decision to pause support for Kyiv as it fends off Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Mr Trump, who had a disastrous meeting with Mr Zelenskyy at the White House last week, was asked about a warning from Polish President Andrzej Duda “that without American support, Ukraine will not survive”.
Asked if he was “comfortable” with that outcome, the US president said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.
“But we have some weaknesses with Russia. You know, it takes two,” Mr Trump added.
Donald Trump. File Pic: Reuters
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It comes as Mr Zelenskyy will visit Saudi Arabia for a Monday meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, while Ukrainian diplomatic and military representatives will meet with a US delegation on Tuesday.
Mr Trump’s latest remarks come amid global concern over the souring relationship between Ukraine and the US, which alongside the EU has been Kyiv’s main backer in its defence against Russia’s three-year land, air and sea invasion.
The US paused military aid and the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine this month after a meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy on 28 February descended into acrimony in front of the world’s media.
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Mr Trump ordered the pause as he attempts to put pressure on Mr Zelenskyy to negotiate a ceasefire deal with Russia.
Mr Trump has privately made it clear to aides that a signed minerals deal between Washington and Kyiv will not be enough to restart aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, Sky News’ US partner network NBC reported earlier on Sunday.
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How are Americans feeling after nearly 50 days of Trump?
Read more:
Rating Donald Trump’s second term so far
‘Trump bump’ turns to a Trump slump
The 78-year-old president is said to want the deal signed, but also wants to see a change in Mr Zelenskyy’s attitude towards peace talks.
Officials have told NBC News that Mr Trump also wants Mr Zelenskyy to make some movement towards holding elections in Ukraine and possibly stepping down as his country’s leader.
Mr Zelenskyy said in a recent interview he would be ready to step down as Ukraine’s president if it meant his country would become a NATO member and find peace.
That came after he was branded a “dictator” by Mr Trump as Ukraine had not held fresh elections – despite laws prohibiting it during wartime.
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Rating Donald Trump’s second term so far: He’s rattling the cage and so many here in Pennsylvania couldn’t be happier
President Trump promised profound change. His former aide Steve Bannon said the first few weeks would be ‘days of thunder’.
It’s been all of that and more.
Domestically and globally Donald Trump has proudly upturned norms.
One key question for me these past few weeks has been: if much of the world (and liberal America) has been buffeted and bewildered by Donald Trump, what do those who chose him back in November think, nearly 50 days in?
I’ve been back to Pennsylvania, a place I have spent plenty of time over the past few years. It’s crucial in every election and was particularly so last November.
The state is sort of a microcosm for the country. To the east and west are the urban Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
In between are the rural Republican heartlands. And dotted throughout are the hinterlands – smaller towns where there is more of a mix of voters but still with a general lean towards the Republicans or, more specifically, to Trump.
Gettysburg and Waynesboro both voted broadly two-thirds for Trump and one-third for Kamala Harris back in November.
On the edge of Gettysburg, a bleak rocky outcrop marks the location of the battle which changed the course of the civil war. The threads which stitch America run through this place.
A few hundred metres away is the spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address.
It was 1863 and America’s 16th president marked the end of the battle with a reminder to a country divided by a civil war that it was a nation founded years earlier on the principles of liberty and equality.
Lincoln was America’s most consequential president, until now, maybe.
In the town’s Lincoln Square, a statue of the 16th president stands tall. My focus was the new White House occupant.
“10!” It was the first of many ‘tens’ on my Trump scorecard.
“Oh he’s doing great…Yeah he’s doing real great,” one man said.
I asked what, in particular, he was happy with. “The money he’s making me.” The theme was the same with the next person.
“Trying to pass no tax on social security for one, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime – help out the workers, help out the retirees, that’s very important to me,” Mike said.
My third conversation was with a couple. I suggested to them that the federal firings had felt quite chaotic; a sledgehammer approach.
“No. I think they’re using a scalpel. They’re finding so much. It looks bad,” the man said.
“We had too many people that were in those jobs, they weren’t doing anything,” his wife added.
A couple say that Donald Trump has been a ‘scalpel’ – not a ‘sledgehammer’
“He’s upsetting Europe as well…” I said in my next conversation. “That’s not good, is it? We’re supposed to be friends.” I suggested with a smile.
“Yeah, well we need Europe to step up too,” the man replied.
“Zelenskyy was here for a pay cheque and got a reality check,” another said, referring to the Oval Office showdown.
“I believe he wants to keep this war going, because as soon as this war is over, he’s going to be voted out,” he said.
“We’re an ocean apart. We’re doing him a big favour by supporting him.”
So much of what I heard was parroting President Trump almost word for word.
“You know, we gave him, what, $300bn? Where did that money go?”
There was no point in telling him that the true American contribution was about half that, and that it is all fully and publicly accounted for.
Lunch was at Chubby’s, a local pizza joint where I met Tom Jaskulski, a retired federal worker, now a handyman.
“He campaigned on all these policies, and he’s fulfilling them,” Tom told me. “It seems like the world’s waking up when Donald Trump came in office.
“A lot of things are happening worldwide, not just in this country.”
‘He’s rattling the hornet’s nest,’ Tom Jaskulski says
Tom’s score? “10! Not because I’m wearing his hat, but a 10 because he’s doing what he says he’s going to do.
“You know, he’s rattling the hornet’s nest.”
Down the road, at the Yankee Doodle Pet Spa, Tina and her 22-year-old apprentice Molly had no regrets and were baffled that anyone could think they would.
“He’s doing what he said he was going to do and I am quite happy with him right now,” Tina said.
‘I don’t think (Ukrainians) deserve our money,’ Tina says
Our conversation turned to Ukraine. I wanted to know her thoughts on President Trump’s abruptly shifting position and near-abandonment of Kyiv.
“It’s not our war. We have enough people in this country suffering, that’s how I feel about it. I don’t think they deserve our money,” Tina said, quoting the president’s exaggerated figures for how much America had spent in Ukraine.
But then our conversation cut to the core of where America is right now: siloed worlds.
Read more:
Russia ‘appears to have ignored Trump warning’
‘Trump bump’ turns to a Trump slump
We were discussing Elon Musk and his efforts to cut government bureaucracy.
“The social security, blowing that open with all of the people that are over 124 still getting social security,” Molly said of Musk’s claim that he had discovered social security was being paid to dead people.
“160 years old, I heard…” said Tina.
“Yeah, that’s insane,” Molly said.
I interrupted: “You know that’s been debunked? That wasn’t true. I’m worried that people are believing things that actually aren’t true. That the Trump administration is telling you stuff that is not true. What do you think?”
“I think it’s both ways,” Molly said, “I think both sides put out fake news and fake propaganda for each other.”
It was clear she didn’t know who to believe. She’d lost all trust in the legacy media. She and Tina had been drawn to social media and they’d concluded President Trump was trustworthy.
Back in Lincoln Square, a chance meeting exposed the other side of all this – deep anxiety.
“I’m a trans person so a lot of his policies have been impacting transgender people and that is just, it’s a scary time to live in,” 22-year-old Em told me.
Em said ‘there’s a lot of hatred in the world right now’
“There’s a lot of hatred in the world right now, especially at so many groups of people. I mean, it’s really… yeah…” Em said before trailing off, face filled with anxiety and emotion.
By nightfall my journey of conversations had taken me to the quiz night at a bar and brewery in Waynesboro.
“I’ve never been more embarrassed to be American…” one woman called Jacqueline said.
Jacqueline has ‘never been more embarrassed to be American,’ and Andrew says everyone is in their ‘own echo chambers’
Her quiz night partner, Andrew, chipped in. “I think it’s the access to information. I think we don’t go out and talk to each other.
“I think we’re on the internet all day. A lot of people are just on the internet and they’re getting news sources from their own echo chambers.”
“Things have been going downhill for a long time,” another man called Marco, at the next door table, said.
“I’m not saying Trump’s right about everything, but you know what? At least he’s trying, he’s doing something different. And I agree with what he’s doing.”
Marco says Donald Trump is ‘doing something different’
This wave of change has been profound. But to assume that those who chose this change – who chose Donald Trump – would have any regrets would be to fundamentally misunderstand America today.
The profound sentiment among everyone we spoke to who voted for him is that he is putting America first with a tangibility that they have never felt before.
It may turn out to be an illusion. But they feel no sense of that at the moment.
He is rattling the cage and so many here couldn’t be happier.
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