Trump-voting Iowa farmer tells CNN Dems may be winning her over

CNN’s John King spoke to Iowa voters a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, and found their dissatisfaction could open the door to Democratic gains in the midterm elections.

Kellerton cattle farmer Shannon Ebsersol started off 2024 as a Nikki Haley supporter but reluctantly backed Trump in the election, but she rates his first year only three out of five.

“We definitely have choices,” Ebersol told King. “We can say, calm down. We can say, talk nice.”

Ebersol thinks the economy feels a bit better and believes illegal immigration has been curtailed, but she didn’t like Trump’s $20 billion beef bailout of Argentina and rejects his push to take over Greenland. “We need to take care of the 50 states that we have,” she said.

“I don’t agree with that in any way, shape or form.”

Ebersol believes the 79-year-old president picks too many fights, and she said most lawmakers in Congress care too much about money and power and too little about families. She told King she’s now open to voting for a Democrat in November.

“Of course,” she said. “I think that you have to vote for the person that best meets your goals.”

But Betsy Zarcone, a Republican voter from suburban Des Moines, voted for Trump after previously supporting Ron DeSantis and then Haley in the GOP primary, but she doesn’t regret her 2024 choice despite vowing to back Joe Biden if Trump won the nomination.

“There’s that saying Trump was right about everything. And that’s kind of how I’m feeling right now,” Zarcone said. “I think Biden probably changed me more than Trump. I think watching nothing be done, you know, for four years about an open border, and I think that actually pushed me further to the right to want more law and order, to want stricter borders, and to want more control over this country.”