Greg Smith was a Democratic activist and former precinct captain who supported Barack Obama in 2008. But over eight years he grew convinced that Democrats were more concerned with creating jobs for bureaucrats and passing along handouts than caring about people like him.
He works 110 hours a week and still can't afford health insurance, Smith said from behind the bar at his Greenlight Tavern, which has operated downtown since the Depression. A homeless person collapses, he said, and rescuers show up, ”put him in a room, give him a sponge bath, medication, and who pays for that? Me."
Smith, 59, voted for Trump and is glad he did.
He's promoted a ”buy American, hire American" policy, and just wait, Trump backers say. Maybe it's unrealistic to bring 6,000 steel-making jobs back to Pueblo, says Reichert, whose father and grandfather both worked in the mill. ”But why not 4,000?" she asked. ”Why not 3,000?"
Critics point to Trump's frequent golf outings and taxpayer-funded trips to Florida, but that's nothing more than sore-loser talk, the president's defenders say. Obama golfed too, they note, and as for Trump's costly travels, give him a break. ”If he's doing his job," said Republican Adam Huskin, 30, a roofing contractor in upscale Pueblo West, ”I don't really care where he's doing it from."
Some see a series of flip-flops: On NATO, on the Iranian disarmament deal, on support for the Federal Reserve chair, among many. Trump backers see something else entirely: the savvy of a deal-maker.
Take China, for instance. Trump vowed to slap a fat tariff on the world's most populous country but has since backed off, which strikes Tom Ready, a Pueblo West dentist, as perfectly sound.
”We're not going to go to war with our biggest trading partner," said Ready, 73, a Republican who showed up at the Eagle club in a skull T-shirt promoting his motorcycle club, the Uglies. ”He said, ‘OK, let's work it out.' What's wrong with that? I don't call it changing policies. I call it a better way of doing things."