Young people feel betrayed
Trump sold young voters on his vision. Many are having buyer’s remorse.
They were a key part of the coalition that powered the president’s comeback, and their frustrations signal vulnerability for Republicans ahead of the midterms.
CHARLOTTE — Joshua Byers was hopeful when he voted for Donald Trump in 2024. The 26-year-old document clerk believed the former and future president when he said he would lower prices and improve the lives of the working class.
Over a year into Trump’s second stint in the White House, and overwhelmed with concern about the war with Iran, buyer’s remorse has set in for Byers.
“I feel betrayed,” Byers told The Washington Post after participating in a focus group of young voters outside Charlotte. “I don’t know why we are fighting [in Iran] if we have never been attacked,” Byers told the group of around two dozen young people. “I just don’t understand why.”
Byers’s concerns highlight a growing sentiment among younger Trump supporters. Many in the focus group said they believed Trump’s pitch in 2024, helping catapult him back to the White House by drawing more support from young voters than any
Republican presidential candidate in two decades. But with prices stubbornly high, a belief that Trump is overly focused on international conflict and concerns about how federal officials are implementing the president’s immigration policy, they also said they are questioning why they voted in the first place.
The young voters’ frustrations signal a broader vulnerability for Republicans with a key prong of the unique coalition that powered Trump’s political comeback. The focus group in North Carolina, polling and a growing chorus of criticism from the male influencers who endorsed Trump suggest the rightward shift among men in their late teens and 20s in 2024 may have been an isolated incident.
“I wouldn’t even say it’s living,” James Wiest, a 23-year-old arcade technician from Mooresville, North Carolina, said of his life during the focus group organized by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. “It’s more survival.”
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Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll released last month found 70 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds disapproved of Trump’s handling of the presidency, compared with 29 percent who approved. Young people who supported Trump are also notably less enthusiastic about voting in the midterms, with 51 percent of 18- to 39-year-olds who voted for Trump stating they’re certain to vote this fall, compared with 77 percent of Kamala Harris voters in that age group.
“I don’t really want to vote anymore,” Byers said. “I’m really starting to just think it just won’t matter. … I don’t want to feel responsible for taking a vote and feeling misled, or misjudged, or making a wrong move.”
The rest of the article can be found in the link if it allows you access. Here's one line that popped out at me further down in the article. .
“He is really focusing on stuff that pertains to him, that he is mad about, and he does not care about what we are mad about.”