Depending on who you ask, one of the upsides and/or downsides of the modern internet is that it gives us a unique (if voyeuristic) opportunity to look inside the brains of people we’ve never met and likely never will meet.
But following The New York Times’ latest attempt to commune with the median Trump voter, some of us might’ve gazed into the abyss a little too hard.
In the feature published on Monday, 12 Trump voters between the ages of 19 and 65 were given the opportunity to answer questions about how they felt the president was performing at the job they elected him to do, giving feedback on all things from his immigration enforcement, DOGE cuts, the Ukraine and Iran wars and, of course, affordability.
Expressing that they felt “frustrated,” “annoyed,” “discouraged,” “betrayed” and “apathetic” about the country these days, these voters gave a glimpse into the worldviews of citizens who had high hopes for Trump’s second go-around.
Ultimately, a majority of them, when given the chance to give Trump a letter grade for his performance so far, gave him a D or an F, with one lone semi-believer giving him a C.
And in the days since this first went live, the rest of the internet couldn’t help but gawk.
Some things on their Trump 2.0 wish lists just didn’t add up — revealing some misunderstandings and/or miseducation.
In the response to the story, there was a recurring theme of “… but that’s not how that works?” and “open the fucking schools” upon reading what some of these voters say they earnestly believed would happen when Trump returned to office.
There was Franceska, the 26-year-old deckhand who said, “I thought that they would get rid of taxes so we would get our full paycheck instead of just half of it,” who was credited with dropping “the final boss co-worker belief” inspiring Sad Keanu-level dread in one Bluesky user.
Argenis, a 35-year-old in HVAC sales and another voter featured by the Times, showed a similar misunderstanding of property taxes that also raised eyebrows — particularly from those who like having well-funded (or funded, at all) community resources like schools and fire departments.
There was also John, a 62-year-old packaging specialist who counted among Trump’s accomplishments ”[initiating] the ending of the penny” and “getting us out of the World Health Organization [WHO] and the Paris climate agreement,” concluding those expenses were “accounting for a lot of our budget money.”
Note: The penny costs were about 0.00003% of the U.S. federal budget, per CNBC; the U.S. contributions to the WHO made up about 0.007% and the pledged funding for Paris climate agreement from before to Trump decided to pull out would’ve made up about 0.2% of the budget, respectively.
One reader found John’s assessment of the division of “budget money” to reach Lucile Bluth levels of out of touch — and others vented similar frustrations in the best way they could.
For quite a few users, it brought up a lot of feelings about the state of civics education (or the lack thereof) in the U.S.
This isn’t necessarily a new gripe, as the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) previously noted that data on the state of civics education in the United States was less than proficient.
From the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exams, data showed that only “22% of eighth grade students across the country are working at the Proficient level in civics” via the test that examines knowledge of “democratic citizenship, government and American constitutional democracy.”
“While proficiency is the goal, about a third of students are not meeting even the NAEP Basic benchmark, meaning they likely cannot describe the structure and function of U.S. government,” Martin R. West, academic dean and professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote for the NASBE website. ”Average scores are trending downward, with score drops for lower-performing students driving the decline — a sign of growing inequality in U.S. schools. What is more, students’ confidence in their civic knowledge and skills is down. They sense there is a problem.”
While there’s obvious sympathy and empathy for children who are struggling to grasp these concepts, some users expressed difficulty extending that same grace to other adults who seemed comfortable being loud and wrong at such a big age.
Luckily, there seems to be an earnest desire to see this course-corrected for them (and, by extension, all of us) in the future. But, given the current leadership of our Department of Education, we might just have to be patient.
