Voters are raging at President Donald Trump.
The 80-year-old swept to power promising to make Americans better off, including at the pump, but now the needle is moving the wrong way.
Gas prices in Alaska are now more than $5 a gallon, and despite his comfortable wins in the state in the last three elections, more and more voters are being alienated, according to a new report from MS NOW.
“It’s hard out here. Simple,” Anchorage-based security guard Calvin Mitchell, 41, told the network.
Gas prices have been ratcheted up nationwide thanks to Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, which sparked a global energy crisis.
It’s causing headaches for Americans everywhere, with national prices around $4 but flirting with the $5-a-gallon mark.
In Alaska, it’s been particularly painful.
Fishing and trucking rely heavily on affordable gas, and both are big business in The Last Frontier.
“I can’t go see my daughter out of state, and we’re not buying as many groceries, and we’re not really doing anything fun or entertainment unless it’s free,” three-time Trump voter and paralegal Gayle Michaelson told the network.
“I would tell him what he initially told the voters is BS—that these prices weren’t supposed to be so high—and look what’s happened.”
Diesel in Alaska hit a record high last month.
“A lot of people are going to look the other way, because a lot of trucking, especially myself, truck drivers are owner-ops… they can’t afford the diesel,” added fellow three-time Trump voter and trucker Meffy Tagalu.
“We need to get out of that war and fix all the prices. You know, we’re hurting really bad.”
“Everybody that voted for him” is beginning to abandon him, he said, according to MS NOW.
Trump now faces an uphill battle to convince those who voted for him in 2024 to stick with him, but as the affordability crisis continues and the war with Iran shows little chance of letting up, it might be a tall order.
The election on November 3 is expected to be a referendum on the former real estate mogul, and in Alaska the Democrats hope former congresswoman Mary Peltola can dethrone Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan after more than a decade on Capitol Hill.
Some polls have put Trump’s approval rating as low as 32 percent at points this year.
“Everybody’s just fed up with the current system,” three-time Trump voter and Marine veteran Carl Cleveland, 47, told MS NOW. “We work our a-- off to keep food on the table with a roof over our heads, and these guys go to D.C.… They go down there and just forget about us, and that’s how Sullivan was, or is right now.”
He didn’t reveal how he’d be voting but said: “It’s just the price at the pump. You got to look at that.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
