The Power Trip: Olivia Nuzzi

Trump Haters Turned Trump Voters: Why one New Hampshirite gave him a second chance.

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KARYN OLSON DID NOT WANT TO vote for Donald Trump. If you had asked her just a few days ago, she would have said she was done with him. A 57-year-old retired government worker from Bristol, New Hampshire, Olson did not want Trump to be the Republican nominee for president because she did not believe he could beat Joe Biden, or whomever the Democratic Establishment decided to install as its candidate for the 2024 election, and more than anything, she did not want another four years of Democratic control of the White House.

For a long time, Olson was willing to tolerate Trump's personality, which she did not like, if it meant the country would be shaped by his policies, which she did. But she thought he had frittered away the presidency through an ego trip of a reelection campaign, and his "super-base" of supporters, increasingly animated by a dark religious fervor that was freaking her out, had staged a riot on government property over the results, and even if Olson did believe the contest was “rigged,” she could not endorse violence, and what she saw that day made it much harder to abide the former president’s ugly quirks.