by WorldTribune Staff, February 6, 2017
President Donald Trump’s quick action on immigration, the economy and the Supreme Court is playing well with the people who put him in the Oval Office, if not his elitist critics.
“I am really impressed with all the things he is doing already; they are all the things he talked about in the campaign,” said Joey Hopper, 37, a single mother of two from Sheridan, Indiana who works for a global recruiting company. “He was a successful businessman who made millions of dollars and he is using that skill to make America better.”
The Indianapolis Star interviewed a number of Trump supporters in Indiana to get their early assessment of his presidency.
In his first two weeks in office, Trump signed executive actions aimed at building a wall on the Mexican border, floated a proposal for a 20 percent border tax on imports from Mexico to pay for the wall, suspended the U.S. refugee program while temporarily banning immigrants from seven Muslim countries and announced his selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
“He is at Mach 2 with his hair on fire doing what the people elected him to do,” said Carla Glos, 69, a retiree from Noblesville who worked in the auto industry as a controller for 45 years. “He is a shrewd businessman who faced extreme difficulties and hard times. Unless you worked in the private sector, you don’t know what it is like.”
Fortville businessman Bill Clem, 62, said protests against the 45th president were misguided and hypocritical.
“All Trump is doing is enforcing the laws that are on the books already, you see?” Clem said. “This opposition, we’ve never really seen anything like that. I mean I kind of liked Obama when he first started. That’s more than they are giving Trump.”
Three elderly sisters compared Trump’s first two weeks to U.S. Gen. George Patton rolling through Europe, a president with “gumption,” they said.
They also said there was some fierce opposition to the new president on their block. Though Hamilton County swung for Trump by 20 percentage points, the sisters told the Indianapolis Star they didn’t dare put out Trump campaign signs before the election, and they didn’t want to be quoted backing Trump because of possible backlash from neighbors.
“I think there is a lot of overreacting out there, some people are not educating themselves and are just reacting at a moment’s notice,” Hopper said. “It hasn’t even been two weeks. Give him a chance.”