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I Voted for Trump

Henry said

I’ve known Henry for a while. Mexican by birth, he came to the U.S. during Jimmy Carter’s administration—back when immigration policy still wore a human face.

“I tricked Carter,” he told me once, grinning like he’d just won a hand of poker. “The Democrats let me in, and I registered Republican as soon as I could.”

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I laughed. Then I asked him why.

“They’re against immigrants,” he said. “I am too. I don’t want those people coming and taking my job.”

Henry owns a small upholstery business. Built it from nothing. Works hard. Charges fair prices. He’s got regulars who wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else, and his hands still bear the calluses of twenty years spent reshaping old furniture into something new. He made it. In the most American sense of the word, he deserves to be here.

But that’s not how he sees the next guy.

This kind of cognitive dissonance isn’t rare—it’s American. It’s the immigrant who slams the door behind them. The small business owner who curses government while cashing a PPP loan. The rural hospital patient who hates “socialism” but loves their Medicare. The irony doesn’t cancel the sincerity. Henry means it. And he’s not alone.

We like to think ideology is shaped by carefully considered beliefs. Often, it’s shaped by fear. Henry made it through the bottleneck. Now he’s guarding the opening. Every new arrival, to him, is a competitor—not a fellow traveler. That’s not just politics. That’s survival instinct.

But here’s the catch: the party he joined doesn’t really want him. They’ll take his vote, yes. They’ll applaud his hustle. But when the shouting starts—at rallies, on cable news, in policy memos—he’s still the guy with the accent, the name they mispronounce, the brown face they don’t quite trust.

Henry believes being on the team will protect him. But the ladder he climbed can be pulled up at any moment. And the people pulling it rarely stop to ask who built the rungs.

Still, I can’t be too smug. America’s full of people voting against their own interests. Most of us do it now and then. Henry just had the honesty to say the quiet part out loud.

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