When Greg Mizell voted for Donald Trump in 2024, he didn’t ask for much.

“Good economy, no wars,” the 72-year-old told MS NOW in Clewiston, Florida. “Simple.”

Now, he says, he feels “hoodwinked.”

“Broken promises, broken expectations,” Mizell said. 

Republicans and independents in historically red parts of the country echoed his disillusionment in recent interviews with MS NOW, speaking openly about how a president they once voted for had let them down.

“He does what he wants to,” said one.

“He’s wishy-washy,” said another.

“I’m pissed off,” said a third. 

Polls suggest they are not outliers: With prices stubbornly high and the war with Iran dragging on, Trump is losing ground with voters in his own party — including some of his formerly staunchest supporters.

That erosion has forced Republican leaders to defend states they normally would not be worried about — including Iowa, Kansas and Texas — as they fight to hold on to Congress.

Trump will hold rallies this week in two of the country’s reddest states: Oklahoma on Thursday and Alabama on Friday. They are unusual stops for a GOP president one month out from Election Day.

“I’m not pleased with him,” Denise Curtis, a registered Republican from Toledo, Iowa, told MS NOW this week.

“His first term, I was gung-ho about him. You know, I was very happy with him. But now, not so much,” Curtis added. She cited what she sees as Trump’s coziness with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as well as rising gas prices, which she said “Trump has a lot to do with.”

In Clewiston, Florida, Penny Lee, a 55-year-old who voted for Trump in 2024, was blunt about her past support for the president: “I was a dumbass.”

“I’m pissed off about the gas prices, the food prices, everything,” she said.

This year, Lee said, she will vote for Democrats. “They seem to look out more for the common person,” she said.

At a street fair in Wichita, Kansas, Nick Dauncey, 36, said he supported Trump “at one point in time.” But “him getting us into another war kind of sucks,” Dauncey continued. “Definitely don’t like to see that very often, especially on the other side of the planet, where we’re not even around. That kind of blows. I’m not a big fan of that.”

Republicans have taken notice. The party has begun treating Iowa and Kansas — states Trump carried by double digits two years ago — as battlegrounds. A Republican source directly involved in Senate elections admitted to MS NOW that the party was anticipating losses in Georgia and North Carolina, typically battleground states, and was truly worried about Iowa and Texas. And some GOP candidates have started, in small but telling ways, to put distance between themselves and the president.

Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, a rock-ribbed conservative, has struck a more independent tone lately. Amid reports of an immigration crackdown in western Kansas’ farm country, he said in a statement that federal immigration officers must “coordinate with our local law enforcement,” an implicit critique of the administration’s approach.

Still, the White House is working to give Marshall a boost. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Kansas recently to campaign for him — a decision widely viewed as a sign that the party was taking seriously the challenge from Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor who led in a recent Emerson College poll.

In Iowa, Democrats are running competitive campaigns in open races for governor and Senate. Republicans currently hold both, and the party is worried about losing them. A GOP campaign consultant put it bluntly to Axios this week: “In Iowa, we should brace for losing everything.”

Curtis, the Iowa Republican voter critical of Trump, has made up her mind. She told MS NOW that she is supporting Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor.

It’s a pattern Iowa has seen before, said Steve Kuiper, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association.

“There was a period where Iowa was really Democratic, and it swung Republican because the Democrats weren’t doing [it] for Iowa,” Kuiper told MS NOW. “So right now, if people feel like the Republicans aren’t doing for Iowa, Iowans are not going to vote Republican.”

Olympia Sonnier contributed to this report.

The post ‘I feel hoodwinked’: In red states, some of Trump’s former supporters turn on the president appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.