--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Donald Trump's been back in office long enough to shock or surprise just about anyone who voted for him at this point. Be it the Signal scandal or the tariff turnarounds, the Jeanine Pirro of it all, the way he talks about Ozempic. And he takes the fat shot drug. So rude. I'm in London and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take. I said it's not working.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Today Explained, we're asking if any of his voters are experiencing voters' remorse. Especially those ones who are newer to his winning coalition. Younger voters, black voters, Latin voters. We're heading to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to ask them if regrets? Do they have a few? And just by way of spoiler, to get this out of the way, the answer is yes, they do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture. You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package. Closer to the action. The best seats. The best suites. Closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment. Closer to the experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying. But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you think Today Explained is?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know. Today Explained, my name's Sean Ramos-Viram. I work at Vox, and so does Christian Paz. Christian, we had you on in September of 2024 for an episode about the presidential race titled How to Win Pennsylvania. Turns out Donald Trump won Pennsylvania. How did he do it?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, so he didn't just flip the state. He actually won it by a bigger margin than he did in 2016. That's because across almost every county, every demographic group, every region, he made significant inroads. But Philadelphia itself was drastic. It got nearly five points more Republican than in 2020. And a lot of that is because he did historically well with voters that have traditionally voted for Democrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of those voters is a woman named Sherita White. Can I share something with y'all too? Producer Miles Bryan and I actually met her before the election at an event called Black Voters for Trump outside of a cheesesteak place in North Philly. I just want to say, when Trump was in a cheer, Blake people was up. And I want Trump back in a cheer because I've been struggling ever since he's been out of the cheer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Sharita ended up standing in for a lot of the new voters that Trump captured last year. They weren't traditional Republicans. They might not have voted for a Republican before at all. But they liked his first term. They remembered it well. And they believed his message this time around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. Sharita. I'm remembering Sharita from our first outing. Have you two stayed in touch? So we failed to get her number back then. So we lost contact until last week when Miles was able to get in touch and she invited us to her house in Philadelphia for a check in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nice. Hi. How are you? I just moved here, y'all. We have no fun in here. That is okay. Thank you for having us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So she told us that during Trump's first term, things were good. But then during the Biden years, everything got worse. Her husband died. She lost her job. Then her house. And now she's living in a neighborhood called Kensington, which is kind of known for being an open-air drug market.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When my kids leave out of their door every day, they have to see needles. They have to see junkies. Yeah, I've been there once. It's rough. Yeah. And then she said that inflation made everything more expensive. And Trump's messaging was clear and simple. Vote for him to bring prices down. And so she did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now with Trump a few months into his term, we figured we'd ask her, how are things going? Have you seen prices go down?
--:-- Sharita White: No, not at all. I just see things just keep rising and stuff. And things just not look like they're not getting better and stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you go to the grocery store, what do you like buy that you notice? Like eggs, milk, bag of chicken. I know it was like probably like $7.99 or $8.99. But now it's like $12.99 or something like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so Sharita is noticing the prices. We heard a lot of people were noticing the prices last year. And that was influencing their vote. Is she noticing anything the Trump administration is doing since the election, since inauguration?
--:-- Sharita White: Yeah, so Sherita told us that she doesn't pay close attention to the news. She catches some stuff on social media. I just know people talking over the internet, like Facebook, Instagram. But some of the general chaos of the first few months of Trump has managed to filter its way to her, and it's freaking her out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When did you start to feel worried about that?
--:-- Sharita White: So when I started hearing, like, family members talking about it and stuff like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sharita's kids get their dad's Social Security payments, and one of her sons has Crohn's disease. So hearing these rumors that Trump was going to make big cuts to Social Security or other government services has unsettled her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, important thing to note here is she emphasized that she wasn't sure that any of this stuff was happening. See I want to get my facts I don know if they true or not because I not sure But she was still hearing about it from friends and relatives on Facebook and that where the worries come from
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I heard there is going to be a lot of people homeless in 2026 And I'm like, you know, if this do happen, I will be one of those people. OK, so she's unsettled. But is she having voters remorse?
--:-- Sharita White: Yeah, so she is feeling some regrets. People say, oh, I wish I would never vote for Trump and stuff like that. I ain't gonna laugh through that way too. Basically, she was telling us like the more that she thinks about it and the more that time passes, she regrets that vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. Poll after poll, what Sharita is saying, it's a recurring picture where you have not very Trumpy kind of marginal Trump voters who seem to be the most upset with his presidency so far in that Trump coalition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It doesn't mean that all of them want to redo their votes, but it does suggest something for Republicans in the future that they can't necessarily count on that Trump coalition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like the most recent Pew Research Center study found that from February to April of this year, Trump's approval among his own voters declined about six points.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump supporters, strong Trump supporters, they're mostly sticking with him. But non-MAGA soft supporters, those are the ones that are really turning on him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you talk to anyone else like Sharita in the ever-important state of Pennsylvania while you were there?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, so while we were out and about in Philly, Miles and I went looking for some of these voters, those who might be starting to drift out of the Trump coalition. They weren't hard to find.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Us, we were betrayed. We voted for Trump. And Trump betrayed us. Because the truth is, people voted for one thing. The economy. A good economy. And these tariffs are hiking everything up. Up my ass. I'm struggling in big letters. And whites too. They're struggling. Plain and simple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so this guy is feeling it. Yeah, yeah. Kensington, where Charita lives, has a big Puerto Rican-Dominican population. And we ran into Jose just like a block down from her house. He's in his early 60s. He said he's retired, but occasionally works as a handyman.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he told us he's voted Democrat for years, ever since he became a U.S. citizen. But he voted for Trump last year because he wanted prices to come down. And what goes up is not coming down. The only thing coming down are the planes. The prices, they just keep rising.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, man. Jose needs his own late-night comedy show. It was so fun to talk to him. But he got serious, too. He said it's more than just economics. He was all for Trump's immigration plans. He liked Trump's pitch about deporting criminals. But that's not what he's seeing in practice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The hard workers, he's kicking them out. The ones that don't work, he's letting them be. How does that make sense? It's all right that he picks up the delinquents. I'm all for that. But those that aren't doing anything wrong, leave them alone. That's all I have to say.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What Jose was telling us is something that the data is reflecting, too. that there were and are plenty of Black and Latino people, especially in cities, who believe Trump's pitch about closing the border, about being tougher on crime, including crime by undocumented immigrants. But the reality has been different.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a lot of the people that are getting caught up in Trump's immigration actions don't have a record of violent crimes. That's not necessarily what these voters thought they were going to get from Trump. And it's a good example of what we're seeing with these new Trump voters, where they like some of his ideas in theory, but the execution isn't really what they were expecting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This one in particular gets me from Jose because it's not that surprising that Donald Trump, like the king of purporting to want to deport everyone who doesn't fit his, you know, ideal of an American, is deporting everyone he possibly can and maybe not even legally can.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it's interesting here because Jose's not alone that there are folks who maybe heard bits and pieces of information depending on their information and media diet that at times are like conflicting, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because plenty of folks in the Trump realm and campaign would say, obviously, mass deportations now, but at the same time would say, but we're going to start and focus on violent criminals. We're going to start and focus with members of international transnational gangs. And so there's maybe a chance that some of these voters heard some things that they believed, that they didn't believe, what they wanted to believe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now that they're saying it in practice, it's not exactly aligning with what they thought they were going to get. And it's more than just immigration. It expands to a whole bunch of things. A whole bunch of things when we're back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Chime.
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--:-- Christian Paz: Support for this show comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's in your LifeKit? I'm asking. They didn't ask that. Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR. LifeKit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The economy sucks. The president sucks. Everything sucks. I hate it. I hate capitalism. One day socialism will prevail and all the billionaires will die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. Today Explained is back with Christian Paz, senior political reporter at Vox.
--:-- Christian Paz: Christian, Charita and Jose are disappointed about the economy. Is that what most of these newer Trump voters are bummed about right now?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, you can probably sum it up as the economy tariffs. For the first couple of months of the presidency, it seemed like plenty of both New Trump voters, independents, and even some Democrats were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
--:-- Christian Paz: Despite all the news coverage about Elon Musk, Doge, executive orders, Greenland, the Gulf of America, Trump was still relatively popular with both the MAGA base and the new voters he had picked up.
--:-- Christian Paz: But then something changed in April. A lot of good things are happening for our country. Please sit down. Liberation Day and the chaotic rollout of Trump's tariffs that really scared people.
--:-- Christian Paz: April 2nd, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed. And overnight, seemingly, it is now more expensive to do business with America, and consumers, especially U.S. consumers, are going to pay the price.
--:-- Christian Paz: Tariffs from the Trump administration have new mothers concerned the prices of baby products could skyrocket even higher. And that's when Trump's approval really fell.
--:-- Christian Paz: People in general, but especially independents, Black, Latino, and young voters, they didn't like how broad the tariffs were, how chaotically they were being applied and then suspended.
--:-- Christian Paz: And overall, it shook confidence in Trump's ability to handle the economy. And it seems that from then on, his trade and economic ratings really pushed down, pulling on all sorts of other things, and his overall standing.
--:-- Christian Paz: And we've already heard from some Pennsylvanians on tariffs on this show, but did any of the Philly voters you and Miles spoke with sound off on tariffs?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, yeah, they did. Miles and I actually went to some college campuses in Philly to talk to young guys. That's another group that swung really hard to Trump last year.
--:-- Christian Paz: And at Drexel, we ran into Nikita, a finance major who's about to graduate but can't find a job. You voted for Trump. What's your report card for him a couple months in?
--:-- Nikita: Honestly, not sure as of right now. Expected things to be a little different, but I'm just hoping for the future and hopefully some of these tariffs soon come to pass, maybe just like a temporary thing.
--:-- Christian Paz: He told us that he voted for Trump because of the economy, because of stocks. He cares about the stock market, pays a lot of attention to it. So it makes sense. He'd be upset about the tariffs and what effect they'd had.
--:-- Christian Paz: But even among voters who are more focused on day-to-day expenses or not as tuned into the news as Nikita is, the trade war is still unpopular. Like, listen to Sharita's take.
--:-- Christian Paz: The thing is, honest and truth, Trump needs to leave them other countries alone and focus on his country over here. He needs to leave them people alone, let them people run their country the way they want to, and you fix this country over here.
--:-- Christian Paz: Now, I think it's worth pointing out that not all tariffs are viewed equally. a good number of people still approve of tariffs on China, for example. They want the U.S. to be more confrontational with China over trade.
--:-- Christian Paz: But trying to force tariffs on everyone else, neighbors, close allies, that's really unpopular.
--:-- Christian Paz: Okay, so from what you and Miles learned in Philadelphia, people aren't happy about the economy. They're not happy about deportations. They're not happy about tariffs. Are there parts of Trump's agenda that have more support?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, there are some. Some social issues like Trump made a big deal last year about diversity, equity and inclusion policies. And the public tends to be still pretty evenly divided over DEI policies in the government or in corporate America.
--:-- Christian Paz: And there's still lots of support for the original underlying goals of DOGE, that Musk effort, Department of Government Efficiency. People do want cuts to wasteful or unnecessary government spending. They do want government to be more efficient.
--:-- Christian Paz: Like we heard that from Angel. He's a 32-year-old forklift operator we met in a park in Philly. We got people in office that really doing a job and they exposing all this corruption and all these waste of fucking tax pay and money that we really need.
--:-- Christian Paz: And other people got it.
--:-- Christian Paz: Are there issues where, you know, Trump's actions have been like straight up popular, just like hugely resounding?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah. So the border is one clear one. Things that I definitely like that he's done is definitely close the borders. Definitely think there's a lot of people out in the United States that shouldn't have been here. So I'm happy he did close the borders.
--:-- Christian Paz: Borders were already closed under Biden, but I appreciate that, Nikita. Yeah And so that the thing is like Trump stance is pretty popular when it comes to keeping the border closed using the military to do that That popular
--:-- Christian Paz: And part of it is because Trump position seems to have moved public opinion over the last four years Yeah. Like think back to Jose that there are folks who want Trump to be more targeted. But, of course, if you ask more specific questions about specific cases or bring in specific details like the case of Kilmar Brigo Garcia or Trump's fights with federal courts over sending people to El Salvador, none of that is doing particularly well.
--:-- Christian Paz: OK, so it's a totally mixed bag on immigration. And it sounds like there's a lot of dissatisfaction across the board on tariffs, on the economy, on immigration, as we've heard.
--:-- Christian Paz: And we also heard that Sharita was having voters remorse. Are these other guys?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, it's a little interesting here because what we heard from people that we talked to and what the polls are telling us and picking up, there's something similar there where there's concern, there's dissatisfaction. But some people think it might be a little too early to pass judgment.
--:-- Christian Paz: I'm giving him some room. He just started. Just give him a year at first just to see how things are going. Or they feel OK with undergoing some short-term pain for long-term gain, kind of the Trump pitch.
--:-- Christian Paz: Right now, everything is getting bad. It's going to be bad. We're feeling it because we're feeling it. But at the end of the day, it's going to be a long term beneficial for us. It's going to be beneficial for us in the future. Wow. I mean, I hope it works out for them, I guess.
--:-- Christian Paz: But how do the new Trump voters compare to the diehards, to the base?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, this is where I feel like it's important to repeat something that defines the modern era. Political polarization is one hell of a drug. Trump's base, his strongest supporters, they're still sticking with him. Even if some of them dislike the terrorists or they feel unsettled or confused about the economy, it's not enough to turn them off from Trump.
--:-- Christian Paz: Unlike the newer, less MAGA, less ideological, less tuned in voters who are turning on him now in the polls. That's kind of what's keeping those overall ratings from slipping even lower. than the low 40s where they are now.
--:-- Christian Paz: Okay, so the base is going to base, but these new voters, if these voters are mad or disappointed or having buyer's remorse, that matters because these voters are the ones who could swing back to the Democrats in the midterms and God forbid we speak about 2028.
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah, that could happen, But the polling isn't exactly suggesting that. These voters are also not saying that they're running back to the Democrats.
--:-- Christian Paz: Jose, the Dominican-American guy who voted Democrat for years before flipping to Trump, we asked him, are you planning to vote Democratic in the future? And he said he wasn't sure.
--:-- Christian Paz: He did say he was still pissed at his old party. Hmm. The Democrats forgot that they had people who needed work here, too. They let in other people who took jobs from Americans.
--:-- Christian Paz: What we still need is lowering the cost of living. Like, we're struggling. We're struggling even for milk. I have a grandson.
--:-- Christian Paz: Sharita, did she say anything about the Democrats?
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah. You know, she was even more pessimistic. If you could rewind to November, would you do anything different in the voting booth?
--:-- Sharita White: I wouldn't have voted at all. I wouldn't have voted at all.
--:-- Christian Paz: And do you think, like, there's going to be elections again next year for, like, Congress and local offices and stuff?
--:-- Sharita White: Well, if it do, I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to be a part of it. Yeah. Yeah, like, I'm tired. Because I feel like at this point, my vote don't matter. So why should I vote? It's like, I can't do nothing to change anything.
--:-- Christian Paz: And I got these kids. I ain't gonna lie, it was a time that Black people couldn't vote. It was a time women couldn't vote. So people were like, oh, you should vote. It's important. I understand it. But I feel like if my vote don't matter, it's pointless.
--:-- Christian Paz: That's a huge bummer. So Charita's so disappointed in both parties that she just wants to disengage.
--:-- Christian Paz: Yeah. And you have to remember, some of these folks like Charita, they're already not necessarily the type of people who are likely to vote, whether it's midterms or a presidential election, somehow Trump has this unique ability. He had it in 2016, 2020, and last year to bring out people who probably wouldn't have voted before.
--:-- Christian Paz: But with him off the ballot and with Democrats not really offering a compelling vision right now, it seems like these folks, they're just going to tune out of politics.
--:-- Christian Paz: It's a shame, really, for voters like Sharita or Jose, who might be frustrated or feeling burned by both parties, to tune out or disengage from politics because they represent a group of voters who can deliver elections.
--:-- Christian Paz: And people have long memories. They're not going to forget what they're feeling right now. And for whatever party wants to replicate the energy of 2024, they ignore these voters and what they're feeling and what they're saying at their own peril.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Christian Paz, it means peace. Vox.com, it means voice. Miles Bryan went to Pennsylvania with Christian. It was easy for him because he lives there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jolie Myers didn't go, but she edited the show. Patty B and Andy K mixed it. Laura Bullard sent the facts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained listener Kabir left us a comment on our show yesterday saying, we want Noel King with no ads. Kabir, FYI, you can get Noel King with no ads by going to Vox.com slash members.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening to Today Explained with or without the ads. As you wish. Bye.
