After one month of Donald Trump’s presidency, just about every American with a pulse and an internet connection probably feels just like Kari Medina — utterly exhausted.
“It’s been the longest month of my life,” said Medina, 53, a Santa Clara preschool teacher. “I feel like every day I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
And this Presidents’ Day weekend the political burnout seems to have reached a new intensity, as the young administration frantically tries to fix the widespread perception that the White House is careening from one bizarre moment to another. The perpetual turbulence has only increased the number of fault lines between the pro- and anti-Trump camps that surface every day in supermarkets, schools and workplaces across America — troubling signs of the racial and political wounds that continue to fester following one of the ugliest presidential elections in U.S. history.
To capture local opinions and attitudes about the country’s new path and new president, the Bay Area News Group has assembled an ethnically and politically diverse panel of 25 people scattered across the region.
It’s true that the Bay Area isn’t as equally divided as the country overall: Only one in four Bay Area voters cast a ballot for Trump in November. But that’s not to say that the political tapestry here isn’t richly woven.
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Our panel includes a registered Democrat who spent part of his childhood in a World War II internment camp for people of Japanese ancestry — yet voted for Trump. It also includes a Republican hydrologist who believes Trump is shortsighted when it comes to energy policy and climate change.
Most of the panelists express skepticism, fear and outrage at the president’s first weeks in office. Many told us they feel as if their civil rights are being threatened like never before. They worry about what’s to come, afraid that Trump’s stances on women’s rights, immigrants, the environment and Muslims will bring even more discord and polarization.
“He’s surrounded by a bunch of dangerous advisers — people who have all these very weird views of the world,” said John Hansen, a 79-year-old attorney from Castro Valley. “His Cabinet is full of the most extreme people he could select.”
Hansen said the disastrous 23-day tenure of Gen. Michael Flynn — who resigned this past week as national security adviser for misleading the vice president about his discussions with Russian officials before Trump took office — clearly illustrated the problem. “He’s an example of the type of person Trump should not have appointed in the first place,” said Hansen, adding that because Trump is “probably not up for the job to start with, he’s probably overly influenced by them.”
But those Bay Area residents who voted for Trump — many of whom see their liberal, latte-sipping neighbors as sore losers — mostly see sun on the political horizon, even while acknowledging the dark clouds that have engulfed the White House in recent days. They say Trump has met their expectations, quickly issuing executive orders aimed at bolstering national security and the U.S. economy. They hope that he will continue down this road, focusing on creating jobs, providing tax relief to small-business owners — and putting “America first.”
“We’re surprised and very excited that he’s following up on his campaign promises,” said Peter Kuo, 48, a Santa Clara insurance agent who was a regional director for the Trump campaign. Despite the rough rollout of Trump’s executive order on immigration and the growing controversy over Russia, the Taiwanese immigrant gives Trump an “A-” on his performance so far.
“Mr. Trump is doing all he can to keep this country safe,” said Kuo, who blames many of Trump’s troubles on “plants” who are leaking embarrassing information. He said he’s confident they will eventually be identified and ousted from the administration.
But while Trump supporters see a decisive president working hard to fulfill campaign promises, his critics increasingly question his competence, ethics and, yes, sometimes even his mental health.
Medina, a Santa Clara preschool teacher, believes the Trump administration is purposely trying to create “chaos.”
The president’s constant tweeting and nationalist rhetoric is extremely personal for Medina, whose mother is white and whose paternal grandparents came illegally to the U.S. from Mexico and worked as migrant farmworkers in Salinas. Medina’s husband is a cancer survivor on partial disability. She fears his health insurance is at risk as Trump and the Republican Congress move to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“When Trump won the election, my husband immediately cried,” Medina said. “It’s very surreal to see this happening because this is the type of thing I see happen in other countries — not in my country.”
Trump’s most controversial move to date was his Jan. 27 executive order temporarily barring immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and halting the flow of all refugees. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets and airports nationwide as families, students and other travelers were left stranded overseas, their visas no longer valid. A federal judge in Seattle stopped Trump’s executive order in its tracks, and the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put the ban on hold indefinitely.
But the bitterness remains.
“We are being targeted and seen as second-class citizens,” said Moina Shaiq, 57, who is Muslim and lives in Fremont.
Shaiq arrived in the United States in 1978 after being raised in a middle-class family in Pakistan. Her husband came here from Pakistan to pursue his education.
“That was big,” Shaiq said of the travel ban. She wondered aloud how she would explain such a policy to her 3-year-old granddaughter.
The executive order, however, impressed Republican Rick Rogers, the 60-year-old owner of Skylonda Equipment in San Gregorio. As a trucker who employs Mexican immigrants along the San Mateo County coast, Rogers said, he sees every day how easily Mexican migrants cross the border to get to Pescadero. Middle Eastern terrorists, he said, could slip through the border just as easily.
“When Trump says we’ve got to stop everybody until we can get a handle on this, that sounds reasonable,” Rogers said, “especially when we know how creepy and cruel these ISIS people are. Any one of those people could be delivered into our country in a day and a half.”
Rogers acknowledges that the rollout of Trump’s ban was rocky, but he believes it needed to be done.
“I understand it was kind of cruel to some innocent people,” he said, “but there are a lot of good people killed in those terrorist attacks.”
But Claudia Corona, a bisexual scientist from Oakland raised in a Mexican-American family, said Trump’s actions have shaken her to her core.
Most concerning are Trump’s incendiary views on climate change and the environment, said the 25-year-old Corona, who has a master’s degree in geology and now works as a hydrogeologist in Walnut Creek, where she studies groundwater. She wants to pursue a doctoral degree, but said she fears that will be difficult under a Trump administration that seems determined to deny scientific evidence.
“Little by little he is trying to destroy everything that makes me who I am,” she said. “I’m a law-abiding citizen. I pay my taxes. I do everything by the books to pursue the American dream. He’s saying no to my past. He’s saying no to my present and to my future.
“He has basically said that what I do is fake. My hope is on a very thin line right now.”
Tess Byler, 57, is a registered Republican from Palo Alto, but she also worries about Trump’s “America First” energy plan, which she fears will take the country in the wrong direction. “Going backwards to shale oil and coal does not make sense,’’ said Byler, a hydrologist.
Some members of our panel have been struck by the media’s aggressive treatment of the president.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, famous for his failed 2016 ballot measure to split California into six parts, says the attacks from journalists have been “relentless.”
“Our country needs growth, jobs and money to pay for all the debt we have accrued,” said the San Mateo resident, an independent voter who hopes Trump will be able to accomplish his goal of deregulating the financial sector.
Similarly, fellow independent Rocco Biale, owner of Rocco’s Ristorante Pizzeria in Walnut Creek, would like to see “some sort of tax reform to help small business — but really all business in general.”
Biale has mixed feelings about Trump, but he agrees with the president that the Affordable Care Act must be overhauled. “There are some facets of it that I believe in,” Biale said, but he opposes the mandate that employers with 50 or more employees offer health unsurance. Employer health plans, he said, should be a perk that businesses use to acquire and retain workers.
But more members of the panel of Bay Area voters say they’re more concerned about the overarching tone of Trump’s policies, which they they predict will continue to divide diverse communities across the country, burning the bridges built by previous presidents and by human rights groups.
“All my fears appear to have been realized, in pretty much every way,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University.
Particularly worrying for Goldman is the “covert anti-Semitism that’s coming out of the Trump administration, most obviously evidenced by the refusal to specifically reference Jews as the primary target of the Holocaust.”
“I as a Jew never once questioned my status in American society until Trump was elected — and since then I have feared for my safety as a Jew in ways I’ve never felt before,” Goldman said.
The civil rights issue also worries one Japanese-American who was a victim of institutionalized racism.
During World War II, Roy Matsuzaki was thrown into an internment camp for people of Japanese ancestry when he was 10 years old.
Matsuzaki, an 83-year-old Democrat from San Jose, fears that race-based incarceration could happen in the U.S. again. And his concern that Muslims might eventually be “put into camps” is why he opposed Trump’s travel ban.
Still, Matsuzaki put aside those concerns and decided to vote for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton, in large part because of the Republican’s promises to keep manufacturing and jobs in the United States — and because “I didn’t want a woman as commander-in-chief.”
Asked if he has any regrets about his vote, Matsuzaki said: “I think I did the right thing.”
