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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) – When Joan Martin learned that Joe Biden had been declared the winner of the presidential election, the retired nurse and avowed supporter of President Donald Trump was deeply disturbed. To strengthen herself, she thought about how her family weathered Hurricane Katrina when it hit her hometown of Picayune, Mississippi, in 2005.
As the storm blew toward the city, Martin rushed into his yard to transport his 85 show chickens to safety. Outside, howling winds ransacked his family’s barn, lifting the edges of the roof from its moorings.
“The next day they (the chickens) were very concerned about the changes in the yard – we had trees felled,” said Martin, 79. “They were very big eyes. But within two days, they said, “Oh, yeah, we can take care of it,” and they did. So I must follow their example.
Across the country, many of the 71.9 million people who voted for Trump – especially his loyal and passionate base – are experiencing turbulent emotions in the wake of his loss. Grief, anger and shock are among the feelings voiced by supporters who thought he would achieve a rock-solid victory – by a slim margin, perhaps easily, perhaps even by a landslide.
There is also a denial. Many are skeptical of the results, saying they don’t trust the media’s call for Biden, the way election officials counted the ballots, the entire voting system in America . Their views echo unsubstantiated claims Trump has made since polling day.
This is despite state officials and election experts claiming that the 2020 elections went smoothly across the country and without widespread irregularities. Trump and the Republicans have reported isolated problems, but many can be explained by human error. Many of the Trump campaign legal challenges have been dismissed in court. And with Biden leading Trump by solid margins in major battlefield states, none of these issues would impact the election outcome.
Yet any fragment of possibility is enough for some Trump supporters to dismiss reality, feel aggrieved, and reject Biden’s calls for unity. Their comments expose the political challenge that awaits the president-elect: The more Trump questions the legitimacy of Biden’s victory, the harder it will be for the new president to unite a torn country, as he has said he wants to do.
“I’m really not in the mood to live and let live,” said Daniel Echebarria, a 39-year-old teacher who lives in Sparks, Nevada.
Echebarria said he was surprised by the election results, questioned some of the numbers and would like to see the president continue his legal challenges. But he also said he didn’t see the result as “a big drill job” and didn’t want to see Trump deny the results in January. Still, he doesn’t feel particularly united either.
Echebarria has said he believes Democrats never gave Trump a chance to rule and cites the Russia investigation and the impeachment trial as examples.
“I think the president was forbidden to do much of his program because so much time and effort had to be spent defending against it,” he said.
Several Trump supporters interviewed by The Associated Press in recent days have been criticized by widespread celebrations of Biden’s victory in liberal cities. They saw hypocrisy in the public, outdoor rallies after Democrats condemned Trump supporters for attending large rallies – some were held indoors – amid the coronavirus pandemic .
“Sad” is how Lori Piotrowski sums up her mood. The president of the Boulder City, Nevada Republican Women’s Club looks like any other deflated supporter at first glance.
“You always want your candidate to win. You are a little disappointed. You worked hard, ”she said.
But Piotrowski also described herself as “extremely” surprised by the outcome of the election. She struggles to reconcile her version of the campaign with the results. She says she has seen so many images of large Trump gatherings in the past few days. On a recent drive from Las Vegas to Reno – through rural GOP-trending Nevada – she only saw Trump signs and banners, she said.
“The votes did not reflect as much enthusiasm. I just find it very surprising, ”she said. “This makes me think.”
Biden won Nevada by racking up votes in urban areas of the state.
Piotrowski, like many Trump supporters, wants Trump’s legal challenges to continue. A massive increase in postal voting and the slower tally of those votes made the tally unusual and odd. Piotrowski said it worries her that races have been called with so many outstanding ballots, although they often are.
“It just seems to me that there are a lot of things that can be improved in the system to make people feel more confident,” she said.
She said she hadn’t listened to any of Biden’s speeches since polling day.
Za Awng, from Aurora, Colorado, is also wary of the vote count.
Awng, who came to the United States as a refugee from Myanmar, has embraced Trump as a politician who echoes his belief that China’s influence in the world must be greatly reduced and in as a person who shares their Christian values.
This spring, Awng lost his job as a chef for two months when the pandemic forced the restaurant where he works to close. Back to work now, he credits Trump for working hard over the past four years to improve the economy. It was difficult for him to understand how the president could lose.
“I believe there is something wrong,” he said, pointing to what appear to be democratic changes in the tally, but resulting from the mail-in vote tally later. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to vote by mail after Trump declared the fraudulent mail vote to be unfounded.
“I hope there will still be count and maybe that will change,” he said.
Even in less tense times, Jim Czebiniak seeks comfort in the evening prayer hours. So when Czebiniak, a staunch Trump supporter who lives in the upstate community of Knox, New York, learned that Biden had been declared the winner, he again turned to the cult in search of of answers.
“First of all, I went to the Lord and asked him why, why is this happening? The Lord said, ‘Because I’m working on things. Relax and let things work out, ”said Czebiniak, 72, semi-retired from a career in writing custom software.
“To quote his Rolling Stones name, Mick Jagger: ‘You can’t always get what you want,” “Czebiniak said.
Still, Czebiniak said he was far from ready to accept a Biden presidency. He cited several unsubstantiated claims from the Trump campaign.
“The election is not really called yet,” Czebiniak said, days after all major US television networks and the PA examined the vote count in key states to declare Biden the winner. “I don’t trust anything that’s going on there with all that vote count.”
Unlike many Trump supporters, Michelle Sassouni was not shocked by the election result or the consequences.
The 29-year-old from Tampa, Florida is an active member of the Young Republicans Club in her area and co-host of a video show called “Moderately Outraged.” She pitched the idea of Biden’s nomination and the potential for victory months ago.
“Everyone laughed at me on the show,” she says. Along with many liberal friends, she had seen strong opposition to Trump. She even understands it a little. “I don’t like everything he does, but I voted for him because I’m a Republican.”
But Sassouni sees no danger in Trump’s vow to fight the results in court. People need to be reassured about the results and a court fight could give them confidence, she said.
“If you voted for Joe Biden, wouldn’t you want to know he won fair and square so that there wasn’t that cloud over his head?” she asked. “If half the country thinks there has been some sort of electoral tampering, it creates mistrust of the system, it creates mistrust of Western democracy as a whole.
Martin, the retiree from Mississippi, says she plans to resume her daily life, care for her animals and avoid talking about the country’s change in direction as a way to deal with the stress and worry that she feels.
“I’m going to go to the yard to check and talk to my chickens and say my old-fashioned hymns and get out of it,” she said.
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Geller reported from New York and Price reported from Las Vegas.
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