‘So far I couldn’t be happier.’ Red California backs Trump, sees protests as overreaction

Reporting from Roseville, Calif. —  Although more than 60% of Californians voted to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, Allison Azama — a Donald Trump supporter — is in the majority here in the largely affluent, white suburbs that stretch north from Sacramento.

And she’s a bit perplexed by the nationwide protests against the president’s executive order suspending refugee arrivals and banning entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

“I think people have reacted a little too quickly,” Azama, 35, said while spending a mild winter afternoon in the park with her two little boys. Those blocking traffic during airport demonstrations, she said, still must be sore over the election outcome.

“We’ve all done it,” Azama said. “We have it in our head we don’t like somebody and everything they do; we react like he might be the worst person in the world.”

Among the nearly two dozen executive orders President Trump has issued, arguably the most controversial has been the 120-day halt on refugees entering the country and the 90-day ban on travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen while the administration develops “extreme vetting” procedures to weed out those who pose a danger to America.

But it’s a policy Azama agrees with. That’s a common sentiment in Placer County, where Trump received 52% of the vote. Another Trump priority Azama can get behind is the construction of a physical border wall to control immigration.

“I absolutely believe a lot of criminals and drugs are coming in through Mexico,” she said.

In the fast-growing city of Rocklin, where quarries have given way to shopping malls and spacious tract homes, some precincts’ Republican presidential vote was as high as 59%.

The population is 75% white, 11.5% Latino and 7.2% Asian, according to city figures. The Muslim population barely registers.

“I’m so sick [of hearing] about the Middle East,” said one elderly man at a Rocklin coffee shop who expressed dismay over the amount of anger in the country. “What I want is people to settle down and get along,” said Randy — who didn’t give his last name because he said he was wary of being harassed by Trump supporters.

In the view of Joe Patterson, a former state legislative aide who now sits on the Rocklin City Council, most Republicans in town are more focused on raising their families than on contentious national politics.

Besides, the president “is doing exactly what he said he would do — but it seems at like a dizzying pace,” said Patterson, who voted for Trump but described his support as tepid.

To the north in Lassen County, hay farmer Jeff Hemphill said of the president’s travel bans and immigration orders: “So far, I couldn’t be happier.”

Hemphill, a Republican county supervisor, said that in the last few days he’s had to reassure local agricultural businesses that they’ll be able to secure a workforce from Mexico by the spring growing season.

“It’s not like he’s banning everybody,” Hemphill said, adding that Trump’s executive order on travel was being unfairly attacked.

“We’re at war whether we like it or not,” he said. “What’s happening in the Middle East is sad, but it is a culture that doesn’t like Americans.”

The GOP leader of the state Assembly, Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley, has voiced unease with the president’s actions — noting that his own relatives first came to the United States to escape religious persecution.

“While bolstering our national security is important, when forced to decide between security and liberty, I will always side with liberty,” Mayes said.

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