KS, MO voters wanted Trump, but what about his policies? | Opinion

Hey Kansas and Missouri, did you really vote for this?

It’s easy to think so: Voters in both states overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump’s return to the White House in November. The results were no surprise. We are redder than red in this part of the country. It’s what we do.

So yeah, you definitely voted for Trump.

But did you really mean to vote for his policies?

Did you want immigration enforcement that whisks your neighbors out of the community? Budget cuts that hurt farmers? Medicaid cuts that Trump’s allies are trying to ram through Congress?

I ask because the national media has taken some interest in our region in the last few weeks, focusing on Kansas and Missouri communities dealing with the reality of Trump’s policies.

The New York Times, for example, took a close look at Kennett, Missouri, where longtime resident Carol Hui — a waitress at John’s Waffle and Pancake House — was taken into custody and is now awaiting deportation to her native Hong Kong.

Kennett’s Trump-voting residents are incensed, according to the Times.

“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” Vanessa Cowart, a church friend of Hui, told the paper. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

The Washington Post, meanwhile, zeroed in on Leavenworth, another deep-red community where residents are perplexed by the harm Trump’s trade wars and unilateral budget cuts have done to already-struggling farmers. It’s confusing: Why would he hurt his most loyal supporters?

Trump’s policies have “been Earth-shattering and life-changing,” said Bryan Zesiger, a winemaker and former GOP legislative candidate. “I don’t know what they were supposed to achieve, but from our perspective, you just hurt a lot of people.”

Voting for ‘solutions, not chaos’?

If you’re like me — definitely not a Trump supporter — there is a temptation to get frustrated at all of this cognitive dissonance. Trump’s anger at widespread immigration has always been at the center of his political identity. Same for his willingness to make life hard for farmers: The government spent billions trying to make them whole for the damage his first-term tariffs did to agriculture.

Of course you voted for this. This is who he is. It was never a secret. The consequences were inevitable.

But that’s not very charitable, is it?

Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat who has had to think a lot about how to win over Trump voters, offered a more nuanced and generous view this week.

“A lot of people supported President Trump hoping for lower costs and safer communities,” she said Monday in an emailed statement. “Instead, they’re seeing mass layoffs, higher prices on groceries, and decisions that benefit billionaires over hardworking families.”

What those voters want, she said, are “solutions — not chaos, not political games, and certainly not policies that put their livelihoods at risk.”

That’s definitely how it should be.

Does it work out that way? Maybe not, and the problem isn’t just Trump and his policies.

Issues versus politicians

Kansans voted overwhelmingly in 2022 to protect abortion rights, but they also keep returning anti-abortion supermajorities to the Kansas Legislature. Missourians voted in November for abortion rights and paid sick leave, but also elected GOP state officials who immediately set about reversing those accomplishments.

No wonder folks are frustrated and confused.

Hui, the Missouri waitress, still loves her neighbors, even though their votes are the reason she is being torn away from the life and family she loved for two decades. And she believes in their good intentions.

“I know over 90% (of) my town is with Trump for sure,” she told The New Republic in a podcast published Monday. “But in their heart, I don’t think they mean to want to deport everybody from this country. Because I know my town people, they have a good heart too.”

Kansas and Missouri may want solutions. But they’re getting the chaos. Carol Hui will pay the price — no matter how much her Trump-voting neighbors would prefer otherwise.

This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 2:13 PM.