![]() ![]() ![]() He goes on this long rant about Trump and tells me I should be ashamed. "When I showed the my ID, he looked at me like I was crazy. "A few months ago, I was at a liquor store in Vermont - Bernie Sanders country," he relates. Jeff Trump, a young Southern carpenter whose Roman nose and blond hair could qualify him as blood kin, has fared worse. "Sometimes there’s a really big mood change when a person sees my name, and I’ll wonder if I’m being treated differently just because of that." "Every time I hand over my credit card or ID, I go through this internal process," she says. "He’s so divisive - people love him or hate him - so I have to tread carefully."įor Kris-Stella, day-to-day transactions have become a psychological nuisance. "I’ve become a lot more defensive about my name," she says. "In pre–Trump candidacy times, I’d say, ‘I wish I were related, because then I’d be rich.’ That joke got me a free upgrade on a flight once."īut since Donald Trump entered the presidential race in June 2016, things have been markedly different for Kris-Stella. "I got a lot of comments about how weird it was to be a Trump studying the adverse effects of economic inequality," she says. In 2008, she was offered a fellowship, came to America, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard. The dark side of being a Trump Zachary Crockett / Voxīorn in Estonia, she went on to study in England, at Oxford and Cambridge. Trumps in America have entered their darkest hour. More specifically, 59 percent say he lacks any remote sense of decency (among minorities, and young voters, this rises to 66 and 76 percent, respectively).įor namesakes like Gary and David, this means that the halcyon days of Trumphood are over. Polls show that at least 91 percent of Americans are familiar with Donald Trump - yet 70 percent view him unfavorably. They now always make a point to show that they don't agree or support him." ![]() When I say no, instead of a fun and playful response, it's this like sigh of relief. "Now they still ask if I'm related, but the tone of the question is completely different. "Before Trump ran for president, people would ask, ‘Are you rich?’ in this fun and playful way," he says. "Back then," he adds, "there wasn’t animosity around the Trump name."ĭavid Trump, a personal trainer from Burke, Virginia, recalls a similar experience: "In the business world, you always need a good icebreaker that was mine. "‘You’re fired!’ jokes were a weekly thing," says Gary Trump, a 45-year-old semi-retired businessman from the West Coast. "I’d get treated nicer - they thought I was a rich relative." But even then, the inquisitions were lighthearted. The elder Trumps I talked to enjoyed relative peace until Donald Trump’s TV show The Apprentice debuted in 2004. I’d get treated nicer - they thought I was a rich relative." "To a lot of working people, Trump meant money and success. "A taxi driver, or a waiter would look at my card and say, ‘Ohhh, The Art of the Deal!’" says Don, who later moved to Norfolk to work to mechanical repair work. In the 1980s, a young, brash business tycoon who shared his name started getting a lot of press, and things began to change. The Trump surname wasn’t always cause for embarrassment.ĭon Trump grew up just outside of Harrisonburg, Virginia, in a small town, and for 15 or 20 years he enjoyed relative normality. I tracked down a dozen Trumps from all across the US and asked them how their surname has been affected by Donald Trump’s presidential run. What once served as a funny icebreaker, or even a source of adulation ("In the '80s, they’d think I was rich!" one elder Trump told me) is now an invitation to be ridiculed. Most don’t bear any discernible relation to the man on the Republican ticket.įor many Trumps, America is not as great as it used to be. They span 46 states, from the remote reaches of Alaska to the sun-bleached shores of Florida. They’re anti-liberal leftists, Christians, and immigrants. Zachary Crockett, Sarah Frostenson / VoxĪmerica’s Trumps are educators, doctors, and machinists. According to Whitepages data, he is but one of 4,788 people in America who share the last name Trump. Since the election, his surname has become a gadfly.ĭon is not alone. He is coaxed into political debates at backyard barbecues.Īrmed with one-liner retorts - "No relation" "Not my uncle" "I’m with Hillary" - he lives in a perennial state of verbal self-defense. This is a 62-year-old technician from Virginia who prides himself as a "free-loving Democrat." But today, Don has become a guilty-by-association casualty of the prominent Trump’s antics: He cannot hand over his credit card in a restaurant without being chided. To be clear, this is not the schismatic Republican nominee. "Is the election over yet?" he asks me over phone. ![]()
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