Some 20 Trump voters have bashed the president for his first year back in office, with one man saying he is almost ready to vote for a Democrat because of the president’s continued failure.
The voters spoke to Reuters in qualitative interviews centered on what they want the 79-year-old to accomplish in 2026, with the November midterms approaching.
Reuters spoke with the cohort monthly for the past year, finding that six did not criticize the president for his performance last year. Three said they were highly dissatisfied, and the remaining 11 voters were more mixed in their feedback.
Although no one said they regretted their vote, they all had a message for the president, whose “America First” agenda has deviated into repeated overtures towards foreign territories. The picture is just as bleak at home with Trump championing a heavy-handed immigration crackdown that saw two people shot dead by ICE agents in Minnesota in January.
Indeed, the voters surveyed by Reuters want Trump to pursue immigration reform in a more discerning manner and more of a focus on domestic issues.
Fourteen said they were disappointed by his rhetoric about annexing foreign countries, such as Venezuela and Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark.
His tendency to “inflame divisions through social media posts” also irked some of his voters. Steve Egan, 65, a promotional product distributor in Tampa, Florida, said he hopes that Trump will “stay in his lane” and not trigger a constitutional crisis.
He even said he could do the unthinkable and switch parties if things don’t change. “When Trump’s out of office, I’m sorry, I can’t vote Democratic generally, but if there’s a Democrat that talks more sense than Trump’s doing, then I’ll probably vote for him,” said Egan.
“I would like him to really focus way more on America,” said Robert Billups, 34, an unemployed accountant in Washington state.
Joyce Kenney, who says she is happy with Trump overall, more so than when she voted for him, still appealed for more humanity from him.
“He needs to find a gentler way on the illegal aliens, not to just say everything’s black or white, because there is a lot of gray in everything,” said the 74-year-old retiree in Prescott Valley, Arizona. “We need to show a lot more humanity to people that are not Americans as well.”
The main takeaway from the qualitative assessment was that voters wanted Trump to provide a clearer pathway to legal status for law-abiding immigrants.
Juan Rivera, a content creator who does Latino outreach for California’s Republican Party, rightly pointed out that the Hispanic vote was crucial for Trump in 2024. He said prioritizing immigration reform would help Republicans in the midterms.
“Latino voters, Asian-American voters who voted for the president, they voted because they wanted to see immigration reform,” Rivera said. “I don’t think all Republicans realize that the president would not have won if it wasn’t for those voters.”
Pennsylvania state corrections worker and former National Guardsman Brandon Neumeister, 36, wants the same thing.
“If they’ve been here, they’ve been productive, they’ve stayed out of trouble, I feel like those are the type of people we would want,” Neumeister said. Lesa Sandberg of St. George, Utah, said that she wants Homeland Security to focus on expelling criminals, not regular folk.
Sandberg, 58, runs an accounting business and works for a Republican political action committee. She also wants Trump “to balance a freaking budget and stop the progression of the debt.”
Terry Alberta, 65, a pilot in Michigan, lamented the limited success of the ill-fated Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk.
“I had high hopes with DOGE and all that, and I thought we were really gonna get a handle on it, but you’re just taking a big wad of cash from one group and giving it to another group,” said Alberta. “I don’t see the deficit actually going down.”
He also urged the firebrand president to “just chill.” “Stop making the people that disagree with you get all lathered up. Just chill,” he said.
