The NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C., published a striking report last week on an American citizen named Jensy Machado, who was briefly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and who is now starting to wonder whether voting for Donald Trump was a good idea.
Machado said he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men when he was stopped by ICE agents on Lomond Drive in Manassas, a short distance from his home. He said he was confused by what was happening, why agents surrounded the pickup truck. “And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know,” Machado told Telemundo 44’s Rosbelis Quinoñez, who first reported his story. “Everything was really fast.”
Evidently, ICE agent told Machado the name of the person they were eager to deport, who’d used Machado’s home address. He explained that his real ID compliant Virginia driver’s license would prove that he was not the man ICE was looking for.
“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”
Eventually, he was able to present his driver’s license — at which point he was uncuffed and released.
“I was a Trump supporter,” Machado told the local affiliate. “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be the things, you know, like … just go against criminals, not every Hispanic looking, like, that they will assume that we are all illegals.” He added, “That’s what they’re doing, now. They’re just following Hispanic people.”
To be sure, drawing sweeping conclusions from the experiences of one individual is unwise. That said, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest “I voted for Trump last election, but…” is an increasingly common sentiment.
There are the federal workers who backed the Republican ticket, only to be fired without cause after Inauguration Day. There are the Muslim voters in Michigan who decided to change the name of their Arab Americans for Trump organization after seeing the president’s ridiculous plan to take over the Gaza Strip. There’s the woman in Minnesota who recently told The Wall Street Journal that she sees her support for the president as the “biggest mistake of my life.”
“I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful — embarrassed is a huge one. I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump,” she said.
A recent Washington Post analysis added, “Anecdotes abound about those voters — particularly people affected by President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal programs and firings of government workers — apparently expressing surprise at his actions and even regret for their votes. … And it’s not just on social media. … An anti-Trump conservative activist says it’s an increasingly real phenomenon in her focus groups.”
I’m mindful of the fact that the plural of anecdote is not data, but we’re not relying entirely on a handful of personal experiences: Trump was elected with just under 50% of the popular vote, and some recent national polls have shown his approval rating slipping several points lower than that.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume the political winds will soon be at the president’s back, especially amid growing concerns about a possible recession, and as the White House pursues an agenda that is not at all popular. There will be some who argue that none of this is especially important. No matter how many Trump voters rethink their decision, the argument goes, it will be inconsequential: He can’t run again, so it doesn’t much matter whether he’s widely reviled or loved. But as we discussed several weeks ago, it’s not quite that simple. There are electoral implications to consider, and Republicans would be smart to keep them in mind: The more voters disapprove of the incumbent in the Oval Office, the better the opposition party’s chances in the midterm cycle. Similarly, just as congressional Republicans would feel emboldened if Trump were riding high in the polls, reveling in his broad popularity, the inverse is true, too: GOP lawmakers, worried about their own career prospects, will likely be less inclined to put their necks on the line when they see evidence of the president’s faltering public support. In other words, the more Americans say “I voted for Trump last election, but…” the more it creates a permission structure for Republican officials to save their own skin, rather than act like White House employees.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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