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| Lynette Villano’s grandson doesn’t speak to her because of it, but she’s still one of the president’s most die-hard supporters. Are there enough Lynettes for Trump to win in 2020? |
The day after the 2016 election, Lynette Villano, a 72-year-old widow and clerk for the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, sent her grandson Connor Mulvey a text message:
“I guess you can probably figure out that I’m very happy today,”
Lynnette began. “Donald Trump is to your generation what Ronald Reagan was to
ours. I am so fortunate to have been part of both. … He defied conventional
wisdom at every turn. … Hopefully I will be going to the Inauguration.”
Connor, who was then starting
his senior year as an undergraduate at Tulane, replied almost immediately.
“Donald Trump is a bigoted
imbecile who tapped into the racism and ignorance in America,” he texted.
“You’re right, he is like Ronald Reagan. He’s going to leave this country in
ruins and completely ignore minorities’ problems. The fact that he ‘won’ this
election is a blemish on the history of the United States. I will not be
recognizing him as my President, because much like George W. Bush he failed to
win the popular vote. The only difference is that I believe Bush was a good
person who was manipulated by those around him. Donald is an arrogant asshole
with a history of abuse, mistreatment, and greed. He and his supporters should
be ashamed of themselves, but it’s evident they lack the self-reflective
capabilities to do so. I want you to think long and hard about what you’ve
aided in. My LGBT friends are scared. My Muslim friends are scared. My Hispanic
friends are scared. My female friends are scared. I’m scared. The fact that
you’ve gone along with his disgraceful rhetoric the entire way through
disappoints me to no end. Congratulations, you’ve damaged America. I hope it
was worth it.”
The fallout from this exchange, which continued over several more
raw messages, still reverberates for Lynette. Despite the harsh texts, she sent
her grandson Christmas presents in 2016. He returned them. She was also not
invited to attend his graduation from Tulane in May of 2017, or his 21st
birthday the following day. When Connor took out a $10,000 loan after
graduating and needed a co-signer, Lynette obliged him, but Connor still
refuses to talk to her. She says she hasn’t seen him since the spring of 2016.
But as a diehard supporter of
the president, and one so enamored with him that during the 2016 campaign her
co-workers called her “Mrs. Trump,” it’s the kind of rift Lynette has come to
expect.
“I came out for Trump the day
he came down that escalator in Trump Tower,” she recalls. “I went right online
and got some pins. I did it to see what kind of reaction I’d get when I wore
them in public. Most of the time it was positive. Sometimes it was relief—like,
‘Oh my God, here’s another Trump supporter I can talk to.’ People liked Trump
because he had the answers to all our frustrations!” But there are many others,
like Connor, who still can’t understand her decision.
I first met Lynette in December
2016 after traveling to Luzerne County in Northeast Pennsylvania for my book
about why this traditionally
Democratic area, a pivotal county in a crucial swing state, surged for Trump in
2016. Trump voters in Luzerne
generally had a contempt for Washington and the powers that be, who they felt
had mostly abandoned them and left them marginalized by flat or falling wages,
rapid demographic change and a dominant liberal culture that mocked their faith
and patriotism. They felt like everyone’s punching bag, and that their way of
life was dying. They sensed a loss of dignity and stature. They felt like
others were cutting in line, and that government is taking too much money from
the employed and giving it to the able-bodied idle. They felt government
regulations had become strangling to small and large businesses, and that the
country was in danger of being inundated by immigrants, both legal and illegal.
For all these reasons, Luzerne is a good place to look if you want
a window into the Democrats’ failure to hold the white working class.Over the
course of the past 18 months, I spent five weeks in different parts of the
county and interviewed about 100
Trump voters before selecting 12 whose stories I told in depth. The voices in
the book are varied. They include a politician, a veteran, a lawyer, a union
organizer, a retired state policeman, a landlord who owns dozens of apartments,
a white nationalist, small business owners and a born-again nurse who believes
Trump was sent by God to end America’s political dysfunction.
But
one of the most fascinating people I encountered was Lynette Villano, whose
support for Trump, like many others in Luzerne, is total, unconditional and
unshakeable. These are the people Trump was talking about when he said he could
stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without losing any
voters. To them, Trump’s scandals
are barely worth mentioning, and his failures to follow through on many of the
economic promises he touted in the campaign are unimportant, mostly because, on
his Twitter feed and at his ongoing campaign rallies, he has fed them a steady
diet of entertaining, rhetorical red meat. They know all his lines, and still
thrill to hear him deliver them.
After two years of tumult in the administration, which has put
forth policies that arguably help the rich and hurt the working and middle
classes, these hardcore Trump supporters are also the people that another huge
chunk of the country still cannot understand. Since the campaign, many of
them—like Lynette—have found themselves cut off from friends and family for
their support of the president.
But it is the steadfastness of
people like Lynette that illustrates the resilience of his base. The question
is: Are there enough Lynettes to sustain the GOP in 2018 and Trump in
2020?
Lynette was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre the eldest of three children. Her
father left the family when she was about 4 years old, forcing her mother, who
worked in a shoe factory, to pack the kids up and move in with her parents.
Lynette’s grandfather was a Wilkes-Barre police detective, while her
grandmother essentially raised her, along with her younger sister and brother.
Lynette grew up in a mostly
German Wilkes-Barre neighborhood she describes as “like Happy Days,” the
television program that depicted an idealized version of Middle America in the
1950s and ’60s. With the help of some adults, she and some friends started a
neighborhood newspaper that they sold for two cents a copy.
She went to a Catholic school
for 12 years and the church was dominant in her life. It was Mass every Sunday,
Holy Days, Confession every week, Stations of the Cross, First Friday Mass,
Novenas, May Crowning, Processions on Holy Thursday.
“Anything Catholic, I was
there,” she remembers. “When we were in 8th grade it was a big deal that we
would be allowed to help clean the altar and lay out the vestments for the
priest for Sunday. After all, women were not allowed to even touch the chalice,
so this was very meaningful and special. … Until I met my husband I don’t think
I knew anyone who wasn’t Catholic.”
In 1965, Lynette married Ronald
Villano, an auto mechanic. They were married for more than 50 years and had two
children: a daughter, who now works as a career counselor at Wilkes University
in Wilkes-Barre, and a son, who is a chef. Her husband died of a cerebral
hemorrhage in August of 2016, three months before the election.
Lynette’s been involved in
local politics for 30 years, starting out as a volunteer for Arlen Specter, the
late Pennsylvania senator who was elected as a Republican but later became a
Democrat. She’s been on the Luzerne County Republican Committee for over 25
years, and was the first woman to become County Chairman. She’s also a longtime
member of the Republican State committee. Lynette parlayed her political
connections to get her job on the SanitationAuthority, which runs the wastewater treatment plant for
Luzerne County.
All this time, she was
a dyed in the wool Republican, voting for many establishment types. But after
Trump entered the GOP primary in June 2015, she threw her support behind him.
The county is only a few hours drive from New York, and Lynette would visit the
city regularly over the years. She knew all about Trump and liked him. She had
long admired his business success and thought he could apply that to boost the
economy. She wanted an outsider, a non-politician. And she was drawn to his
signature campaign issue of curbing illegal immigration because it had special
resonance in Luzerne, where Republican Congressman Lou Barletta had given
national attention to the topic 10 years earlier as mayor of Hazleton. Lynette
was a big fan of Lou’s. Because of a surge of Hispanic immigrants, Hazleton has
become a minority-majority city within the last ten years.
Trump’s roguishness also appealed
to her. She liked his moxie, his feistiness. “He wasn’t afraid to say anything.
The political correctness has gotten so bad that people were so intimidated.
People felt like they were getting things shoved down their throat. They
thought Trump was talking common sense, and that maybe he’d bring jobs back.”
She was not feeling good about the country under President Barack
Obama. The economy was doing poorly, at least in Luzerne County. She thought he
was apologizing for America too much, and she was disgusted with Obamacare.
Lynette thought electing
Hillary Clinton would have meant an effective Obama third term. And besides,
she says, “It was so insulting to women that we were made to feel we had to
vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman.”
There was also a cultural
dissonance that had developed in the Obama years, she thought. There was too
much illegal immigration around and about, too much political correctness and
not enough respect for traditional values. She is quick to clarify that her
opposition to Obama had nothing to do with his being black, and she didn’t like
it when people inferred that. She liked him as a person. She just didn’t like
his policies, or the way he governed.
“In my era, you respected authority,” Lynette says. “Today, a lot
of the standards we grew up with are gone—the church, the flag. And these
police shootings. I’m extremely sensitive about that. I’m trying to understand
this Black Lives Matter movement. But I’m not black, and I grew up in a
Catholic girls’ school, so maybe I can’t.”
The Obama presidency reminded
Lynette of the Jimmy Carter “malaise” years in the late 1970s, another time
when people weren’t feeling good about the country, before the sunny arrival of
Ronald Reagan. In fact, she felt Trump was Reaganesque. After all, Reagan was
an actor who wasn’t taken seriously, just like Trump wasn’t. Both offered hope,
she thought.
Lynette decided to run to be a
Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. She won on a
slate with two other women which they called “Women for Trump”—a name they
chose because their candidate had been deluged with criticism for having called
women “dogs” and “fat pigs” in the past. Lynette thought that was much ado
about nothing, and it was important to show that Trump had plenty of supporters
who were women.
“The three of us running for
delegate would stand out at the mall in Wilkes-Barre with our signs and we’d
spend the afternoon there, people beeping their horns as they passed by,”
Lynette remembers. “You couldn’t believe the energy! Sometimes, Hillary
supporters would drive by and give us the finger.”
As she talked politics daily
with people she met, Lynette kept having to douse other Trump brush fires, such
as when the Access Hollywood tape came out a month before the election. Lynette
gave Trump a pass on that: “I did not approve of what he said on the tape. But
something he said 30 years ago did not really bother me. They used it to make
him look bad. Men in locker rooms do say things. Women too!” Lynette was prone
to exaggerating the age of the tape to lessen its significance. When the tape
was revealed in 2016, it was 11 years old, not 30.
She took the same line when a string of women came forward during
the campaign to claim that Trump had sexually abused them years ago. Why hadn’t
they come forward at the time the incidents supposedly happened? Lynette asked.
And she complained that the Trump accusers were given credibility by the media,
while the women who had accused Bill Clinton of similar offenses were largely
dismissed as white trash.
Along with other women of a
certain age, Lynette would also come to think that the emerging Me Too movement
was going too far. “I had things done to me when I was a young woman, but it
was dealt with at the time, not years later. When you come out years later and
ruin a guy’s reputation, I have trouble with that.”
Lynette also found herself playing defense against a steady stream
of Trump’s shocking statements—such as when he questioned the legitimacy of
Barack Obama’s birth certificate, said John McCain was not a war hero, or that
Mexicans coming to the United States were rapists—statements so outrageous they
would have destroyed any other candidacy, but which came to be regarded as par
for the Trump course.
“Yes, he said these things,”
Lynette conceded, but, pointing to the announcement speech, she added: “He did
not say all Mexicans. Some
things were picked out and used over and over again. We say someMexicans. It’s the word illegal. We
don’t want the illegals to come. All our ancestors came her legally, and people
think that’s not what’s happening today. Then you look at these refugees. It’s
a complicated world.”
Lynette learned to spin, like an amateur Kellyanne Conway, when
talking to Trump detractors or to journalists who would come to town and
interview her as a leading, gung-ho Trump supporter. She’d say you had to learn
how to decode Trump, to know what he meant and what he didn’t. She thought
Trump’s insults were mostly amusing, and didn’t take them literally, or
seriously. It bothered her when the media would blow up Trump’s provocative
statements when she and his other supporters knew he
didn’t really mean what he said. They just thought he was a different candidate
who was speaking his mind in a refreshing way.
“Unlike Hillary, Trump didn’t
talk down to people and we liked that,” Lynette says. “And the Russians didn’t
make us vote for him!”
Now, even with scandals engulfing the administration, she is no
less defensive. I asked her about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort,
who was convicted of financial fraud and pled guilty to conspiracy against the
U.S., among other charges. I mentioned, too, the revelations in Bob Woodward’s
book, including that senior members of the administration have little respect
for the president—and the New York Times op
ed written by an anonymous Trump administration official claiming that some in
the administration are working against the president to thwart his “more
misguided impulses.”
“The Manafort
thing was so long ago that it’s got nothing to do with Trump and collusion,”
says Lynette in one typical response to the recent wave of bad news. “Even the Woodward book, the people
who like Donald Trump don’t care. People say things and they lie all the time.
It’s not going to be on my list of things to read. As for the New York Timesop-ed, the fact that it was
anonymous, I never give credibility to someone who won’t identify themselves.
We just need to focus on the things that are affecting our lives and so far,
everything he’s doing is affecting our lives in a positive way.”
Still, sometimes it has
been hard to be a Trump
supporter.
“When people put Trump
down all the time, it was hard not to think they were putting you down
too,” Lynette says. “We were constantly being made to feel uneducated if we
supported Trump. We felt like elitists were laughing at us. That hurt me.”
And there were personal
costs as well. “It wasn’t easy to be with Trump. I went against people in my
own party, I lost friends, and it caused a break within my family.”
The family rift was
especially painful to Lynette, as it has cut her off from her daughter, Lisa,
and Lisa’s son, Connor, who is now a student at Tulane Law School.
After Connor replied to
Lynette’s initial message after Election Day, in a manner, she says, that was
not respectful or appropriate when addressing his grandmother, Lynette did not
back down. “I’ve saved America and I am very proud,” she wrote in reply. “It is
your future that kept me strong and made me work even harder. BTW, I also have
LGBT and women friends and legal Hispanics that support Donald Trump. 80% of
the country feels we are headed in the wrong direction and that is the poll
that mattered. Us uneducated deplorables are a lot smarter than you think. We
are tired of the corruption and we aren’t going to take it anymore. Just look
at the protesters in the streets - that is why Donald Trump won. Every
four/eight years, we have an orderly transfer of power. It is what makes our
country great. So, calm down and be proud you live in the greatest country in
the world. Learn how to be grateful for all the opportunity you have and
especially a family that cares about you. All I know is my mother would be very
happy and proud of me.”
To which Connor replied,
“You didn’t save America, you damned it. Trump goes against core American
values and you bought into his race baiting. You can keep lying to yourself and
think that people want Trump, but he lost the popular vote. … You don’t have to
deal with the repercussions of his presidency. I do. My entire generation does.
You’re completely brainwashed and incapable of seeing a rational truth. … The
U.S. is not the greatest country in the world anymore. Last night confirmed
that. We aren’t going to be for a long time. Get a grip on reality. If you
deplorables are as smart as you think you are, maybe you would realize how
dangerous Republican economic plans are. Now I’ll be entering the job market
under one. Thanks for that. But that’s nothing compared to what my marginalized
friends will have to go through. Thanks to you and your kind, hatred and
bigotry have been normalized and legitimized. I hope you’re proud of that.”
Perhaps dejectedly, Lynette responded: “Till the day I die I will
stand by my decision to work and help elect Donald Trump. You can describe it
in any twisted way you want, but I know I did the right thing. You may have a
college education, but you need life experience with it to really learn about
life. I have very good friends and we totally disagreed on this election, but
we respected each other’s opinion. You know better than anyone the popular vote
doesn’t matter at all. It’s the Electoral College, and when finished he will
have over 300 votes. Massive government failure and the average working person
feeling left out is why he won. It’s a shame that fancy college doesn’t teach
you common courtesy and tolerance for others’ opinions. I still love you and am
proud of you, even though I do not agree with any of your views.”
But Connor had the last word.
“This college has taught me more than you’ll ever know about politics. I
respected you voting for McCain and Romney, but absolutely not Trump. I am
truly ashamed. You’re too far gone at this point, and I haven’t seen an
original thought come from you in years regarding politics. I guarantee you
would be in an uproar if Hillary won the electoral but lost the popular. The
government hasn’t failed, Republicans have. Your party has become the party of
the KKK and neo-Nazis, and if you’re too blind to see that I feel sorry for
you. Maybe if you went to college you would realize that Trump is the worst
candidate in modern history, and that he’s up there with George Wallace and
David Duke. Maybe you would also realize your party wants to totally infringe
on basic civil rights of women, the LGBT community, and minorities. If you had
more interaction with them you might be able to sympathize.”
There were other political
divides in Lynette’s family. Her sister, a Democrat, unfriended Lynette on
Facebook over her pro-Trump posts, though they remain in touch in other ways.
And when her uncle in Michigan died recently and she drove out for the funeral,
Lynette discovered other splits there. She stayed with a cousin who had a sign
in her yard that read: “We support refugees and our Muslim neighbors.” On the
other hand, because she was wearing her Trump pin, others in the family came up
to tell her that they too had voted for the president.
“I’m sure I’m not the only one
who has had to deal with estrangement from family members because of the
election,” Lynette says. “Does it hurt? More than I can put into words. … This
is the reality of how divided we are in this country—friendships lost, and in
my case the relationship I had with my daughter and her family. Politics has
been part of my life for years but this is the first time I have had to deal
with this reaction. People so dislike our president, there is no tolerance for
anyone who supports him. Sadly, this is the world we live in today.”
But this, too, she says, you can’t blame Trump for—even though
he pledged in his acceptance speech on Election Night to try and unify the
country.
While Lynette concedes Trump made the unifying
pledge, she now thinks that he has too many enemies to follow through on it.
“There is just as much responsibility from the Never Trump people, the
Hollywood Left, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the swamp in DC,
late night TV, Black Lives Matter—I could go on and on,” she says. “Half of the
country hates the president. Do you really think there is anything he can say
or do that that will bring us together? I’m all for promoting civility, but we
are so divided and people are so dug in, it’s hard to have a conversation.”
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