FTA:

"Nobody that I've talked to understood the devastation that having this administration in office would do to our lives," Piggott, 47, told Reuters in an interview, saying she would not have supported Trump if she knew then what she knows now.

"As much as I think that President Trump is doing wonderful things for the country in some regards, I don't understand this at all," she said.

The renunciation of allegiance to Trump by Piggott, a church-going conservative and three-time Trump voter, comes as political analysts are parsing early signs of a possible backlash in Republican strongholds where the government-slashing efforts of the president and his cost-cutting czar Elon Musk are beginning to be felt. . . .

In interviews with three dozen workers, business owners and politicians in Parkersburg, which sits at the convergence of two rivers including the mighty Ohio, nearly all said Trump's focus on cutting government spending was a worthy goal. But most said they knew BFS employees to be hard-working and didn't see them as the right target if the aim was to eliminate waste.

Scot Heckert, a Republican who represents parts of Parkersburg in the West Virginia state legislature, said he was worried that layoffs at BFS, which employs about 2,200 workers in Parkersburg, would "devastate" the local economy because the workers earned higher-than-average salaries, and because of the looming prospect of another round of cuts.

If you are on Bluesky, you can check out this thread where Carpenter is collecting articles about Trump voters who didn't think his policies would hurt them but now that they have, suddenly regret their votes and wish they could take them back:

Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter.bsky.social

"I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of meritocracy. Not the indiscriminate firing of people," said one Republican congressional aide granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The only way for billionaire to achieve glory, is for the rest of Americans to feel pain.
This country is so successfully divided, they're going to get away with it.
#8 | Posted by ClownShack

Suck it MAGAT losers.
#5 | POSTED BY LEGALLYYOURDEAD
Unfortunately. We're all in the same boat.
Despite the illusion of conservatives vs liberals.
The reality is, it's the rich vs the rest of us. They're winning.
#9 | Posted by ClownShack

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Lyndon B. Johnson

Yes, Trump has given his supporters a long list of people they can look down on. They love him for it and are blinded by that love. They don't see the damage he is doing to this country, even when that pain hits close to home.

#18 | Posted by Corky

That's the context of one of the most famous statements on race ever attributed to President Johnson, an off-the-cuff observation he made to a young staffer, Bill Moyers, after encountering a display of blatant racism during a political visit to the South. Moyers tells it in the first person:

We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

"i.e., removing qualified people because their skin color is ~wrong~ while replacing those people with little more than toadies?"

Yes, and the list of people Trumpers look down on has been expanded to include minorities of all stripes, women, LGBTQ, immingrants, etc. It's not just race anymore. Ethnicity, gender, sexual preference , etc. have all been added to the list.