{"id":147781,"date":"2025-06-09T19:17:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T19:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=147781"},"modified":"2025-06-09T19:17:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T19:17:29","slug":"my-journey-deep-in-the-heart-of-trump-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=147781","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;My Journey Deep in the Heart of Trump Country&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/09\/opinion\/trump-supporters-kentucky.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NY Times<\/a>: &#8220;In the 2024 election, 81 percent of Kentucky\u2019s Fifth Congressional District \u2014 the whitest and third poorest in the nation \u2014 voted with Mr. Ford for Donald Trump. Once full of New Deal Democrats, the region had suffered losses that its people felt modern Democrats didn\u2019t care about or address. During World War I and II, the \u201cblack gold\u201d dug out of their mountains fed industrial America. Then the coal mines closed, and the drug crisis crept in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2016, Mr. Trump\u2019s answer to these losses took the form of policy promises and a story. Many of the policies he promised never panned out. As James Browning, a thoughtful drug counselor and grandson of a coal miner killed in a mining accident, recalled, he never brought back coal or \u201cgreat, new jobs.\u201d He did \u201cnothing about drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Mr. Trump\u2019s story of stolen pride did take hold. With the fall of coal and American manufacturing, he told his followers, you lost your pride. That\u2019s because others stole it from you, just as they stole the 2020 election, and they still want more \u2014 your guns, your families, your way of life. I\u2019ll take revenge on them, he declared: on the pet-eating immigrants, uppity women, spying international students, idle government workers, and the institutions behind them \u2014 the universities, the mainstream press, the judiciary, the deep state.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NY Times: &#8220;In the 2024 election, 81 percent of Kentucky\u2019s Fifth Congressional District \u2014 the whitest and third poorest in the nation \u2014 voted with Mr. Ford for Donald Trump. Once full of New Deal Democrats, the region had suffered losses that its people felt modern Democrats didn\u2019t care about or address. During World War&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147782,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147781\/revisions\/147782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}