President Donald Trump promised to run America like a business. Now, some of his most loyal customers have buyer’s remorse.
Take Jessie and Carter Meadows, a husband-and-wife pair of small-business owners from a town in Georgia. For them, Trump’s return to the White House was a sign of forthcoming prosperity. But so far, the president’s second term hasn’t been all they hoped it would be.
“Is there anybody that can go up there and stay what they ran on?” Jessie Meadows, 36, lamented to Carter, 37, according to a profile on the couple from The Washington Post.
Faux berries that Jessie uses in the arrangements she sells at her flower shop have gone up in price due to Trump’s tariffs, she told the outlet.
Carter, meanwhile—who runs a funeral home—has also seen a price surge from one of his suppliers. He said it’s likely he’ll raise his own rates soon, calling the tariffs “unplanned and childish.”
Across the country, frustration is mounting. Trump was reelected on promises including slashing energy costs and supercharging American manufacturing.
But confidence in him is wavering. Polling from Fox News found that tariffs and the economy are now the top reasons Trump critics disapprove of his performance.
Trump has acknowledged that his tariffs may bring temporary pain for American consumers, but he has maintained that they will benefit them in the long term.
However, he’s seemingly lost trust. In November, Americans were almost evenly split on the issue of tariffs—52 percent of voters supported tariffs, while 48 percent opposed them, according to polling. Now, three in five polling respondents are against tariffs on imported goods, according to CNN.
And that’s not the only area where the Trump administration has lost trust.
A civil war has been raging within Trump’s Cabinet and in his MAGA base over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, with top supporters such as Joe Rogan taking aim at FBI Director Kash Patel for failing to deliver on his promise to reveal the contents of the files.
Jessie and Carter Meadows are among those questioning why Trump hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise to make those files public.
When GOP lawmaker Thomas Massie filed a petition this month to force a House vote on releasing the files, Jessie reached out to her own congressman, Republican Rick Allen, to voice her support.
A longtime friend of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump has repeatedly lashed out over the mounting pressure to release the files—even at his own supporters.
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls–t,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social tirade this summer.
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats’ work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success,” the president continued, “because I don’t want their support anymore!”
Reading those words, Carter felt most ashamed for voting Trump back into office, The Post reported. Jessie, for her part, was angry. She decided she supported the MAGA movement—but that didn’t mean supporting Trump.
Make America Great Again “does not depend on one man,” she said later. “And if he abandons the movement, then we can continue on without him.”
The post Why This MAGA Couple Is Finally Turning on Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
