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Estefany Frost still gets calls from people who heard her talk to Donald Trump at a campaign stop in Georgia last year about how difficult running her restaurant had become in an era of inflation.
One month into the new administration, she and other conservatives here are still absorbing the whirlwind pace of change. While she remains supportive of Donald Trump’s agenda, she said she’s wrestling with some of the implications.
“A lot of people might agree or disagree with what he’s doing, but I would say that he’s done a lot of things very quickly,” she said. “I like that, as the president, he’s doing things he promised people, because that’s what people voted for.”
But she can’t quite square the effect of a lightning-fast change on immigration and tariffs with Trump’s pledge to her to lower prices. She’s still looking for answers there. “I mean, he’s the president now. He can work something out for us,” she said.
Trump visited Zebulon, Georgia, in October to hold a “faith voters’ forum” at Christ church, an expansive local congregation here. “I think it’s the most important election in the history of our country,” he said then. “I really believe that. I think most of the people here do, too.”
Four months later, on an overcast Sunday morning, construction workers Sam Whatley and Jeff Clay were waiting for their clothes to dry at a laundromat down the street from the church and about an hour south of Atlanta, far enough outside of the city’s ring of political moderation where Whatley’s “Let’s Go Brandon” trucker cap remains relevant.
For Kamala Harris voters, the headlines of the last few weeks reflect unfolding chaos. For Trump voters, it’s just Sunday morning.
“He’s coming at everything just a whirlwind,” Clay said. “You don’t know what he’s going do next. I mean, he’s basically covered about everything he said he was going to do, or he’s trying, and I’m sure there’s more that could be done. He needs to drain the swamp up there at the Capitol.”
Whatley doesn’t expect Trump to accomplish all of his campaign goals – “but he’s taking a sledgehammer to it”, he said. “He’s pretty much exposed things. That’s his main mission, I think. He knows he’s not going to get everything he wants to do, but he’s going to expose it all.”
The “department of government efficiency” group working for Elon Musk is facing court challenges for violating the law by directing agencies to fire federal employees, and facing questions of illegally accessing computer systems at several government agencies.
In the view of conservative voters around Zebulon like Whatley, Musk is simply a “good businessman” who should be trusted to do the work Trump has asked him to do.
“They’re saying he’s not an elected official and he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing,” Whatley said. “But, I mean, the Democrats done it too, but it was OK when the Democrats done it.” He likened Musk’s overarching influence over government policy to that of Anthony Fauci’s broad direction of the response to the pandemic.
Up the street, Justin Raines, his wife Katie and two children were shopping at Freshway Market before the 11am service. His wife finds what’s happening in Washington frightening, he said. She said she doesn’t vote, though. Justin is still measuring.
“Me personally, I don’t get into politics,” he said. “I mean, I just look at the good and the bad for whatever president. I’m kind of in between right now. He had a lot of ideas before the campaign took place. Don’t get me wrong, he still got a lot of good ideas. He just hasn’t put them in place yet. I mean, he’s going to be president for four years. You’ve got to give him a chance.”
The couple corralled their kids in the dairy isle and pointed out the high prices of milk, meat and eggs. “We’re in a supermarket,” he said. “As far as groceries, gas, cars, homes … I mean, people are struggling to pay for their homes … Lower prices. That was one of his big things that I paid attention to.”
For conservatives watching the Trump administration violate norms – and perhaps the law – as it fires government employees and folds government programs, the longterm goal of spending reduction is more important than the short-term pain inflicted on people they believe have been gaming the system.
“I think he’s opening up something that shows the American people what needs to be done,” Clay said. He argued that inflation and government spending were connected, and that Musk’s budget slashing and firings – and Trump’s tariffs – would reverse consumer price increases.
“I’d like to see some of the prices – especially food and stuff – come down,” Clay said. “And I think eventually, once he goes through there and gets some of the non-necessary spending that they’ve been doing, I think some of that will come down.”
Frost suggested Trump could lean on food suppliers such as Sysco to lower prices for small businesses, or negotiate deals with other countries to counteract the effect of tariffs on Canada and Mexico. She said she understands that increasing enforcement on immigration may end up driving up prices.
But Frost is also the child of a legal Mexican immigrant.
“My mom has done it the right way,” Frost said. “She has her paperwork and everything.” She said she wants Trump to create a program for undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for decades and “have done nothing bad”.
The prospect of this approach, given Trump’s public pledge of mass deportation, seems unlikely.
“I mean, I understand that,” she said. “I understand there’s a process for different things, but it would be, you know, amazing.”
