Eight years ago, Peggy Hayes thought she saw something amazing in Donald Trump: a politician who knew how to make the political system, the media and the culture react to him.
He would be a powerful father figure to a nation that felt “neglected,” he said at the time.
Hayes, a 62-year-old personal trainer from a politically volatile part of Virginia, was an early Trump supporter (before he won the Republican nomination) and was the subject of a Times profile of what was then a burgeoning movement.
Peggy Hayes gives instructions and announcements to Megan Tigg in her home gym in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Life has changed for Hayes, pictured in 2016, but she still supports Trump.
(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)
Since then, Hayes has been through a lot — including two moves, the birth of a grandchild and a workplace accident — and her views on Trump have evolved. But she remains a supporter, albeit a less enthusiastic one. And her perspective remains valuable in understanding how and why Trump remains a political force despite an insurrection, two impeachments, multiple criminal charges and convictions that would make his election unprecedented.
“I feel like we are in the same situation,” he said in a recent interview. “Sometimes it seems like democracy has been lost a bit, that it is less in the hands of the people.”
That doesn’t mean Hayes agrees with Trump’s persistent, false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. She’s a bit hesitant on that question. It’s more a sense of being overwhelmed in a rapidly changing society, where issues come and go so quickly, it seems to her, that ordinary people don’t have time to deliberate and react when the government makes a decision.
“We moved on to the next thing right away,” he said.
Critics might argue that Trump has something to do with that, with his stream-of-consciousness rallies, his divisive social media posts and his own promises to act like a dictator on his first day in office. But Hayes sees it differently. She believes people were more patriotic and less consumed by the day-to-day need for economic survival when he was president, because inflation had not yet driven up the prices of basic necessities like food and rent.
Peggy Hayes' finances have improved over the past eight years, but she still feels the pressure, especially as prices have risen.
(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)
That's tricky, too. Many Americans struggled during the pandemic — polls at the time showed disillusionment with Trump's handling of the pandemic — and the economy has recovered nicely under President Biden, according to government indicators.
Hayes’ life has taken some twists and turns, too. When the pandemic wiped out his personal training business in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he moved to Florida and took a job at a sports medicine clinic near Jacksonville.
She got health insurance for the first time. She suffered a freak finger injury that led to an infection, numerous surgeries, a legal battle over workers' compensation and a year out of work. She found a relationship with the man who rented her the house in Virginia and moved back home about two years ago.
She restarted her personal training business and is making more money than she did eight years ago — about $60,000 a year — and has an Obamacare insurance plan, after previously turning it down. Her finances are better than they were eight years ago, but she still feels the squeeze, especially as prices have risen, she said.
She no longer sees Trump as the dominant media figure he was eight years ago.
“He was the person who controlled the narrative,” she said. “The things he said changed the way the interviews went. At that point, he controlled everything.”
“Now it seems like everything has changed and he has become a loser,” he continued. “He is constantly in the spotlight and it seems like no one else is doing it.”
Hayes rejects the idea that Trump’s behavior was unprecedented and put him in this position. He blamed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to contain the Jan. 6, 2020, mob, for example, acquitting Trump of inciting it with false claims that he had won the election. Instead, Hayes expressed surprise that so many rioters were sentenced to prison.
Peggy Hayes takes a selfie with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at a Donald Trump rally in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2021.
(Peggy Hayes)
“It's almost like he's playing with the cards he's been dealt,” he said of Trump's ability to exploit the media and understand the “big machine.”
But Hayes is not as enthusiastic as she was eight years ago, when Trump was a constant topic of conversation in her life. Her favorite personal training clients, an older couple who loved to talk about Trump, have died. She has stopped using Facebook.
“I felt more interested and excited,” she said. “I want Trump to be in that position, because he did well for a while, and I’m not too thrilled with what’s happened during the time this last administration has been in power.”
She knows that not everyone shares her views. Her two adult daughters are more liberal than she is, although she tends to avoid political discussions with her family, she said.
And she received a flurry of emails, Facebook messages and letters after The Times profiled her in 2016. Many called her ignorant. Some, seeing her financially strained, offered her a job.
“They were very angry with me, they said I was misinformed,” she said.
She admits that, like most people, she doesn't pay attention to every detail of the news. She said she was surprised by all the negative reactions and sad, but not bitter.
“All the problems that we as Americans have had to tragically overcome together have not brought us together,” he said. “They are far from uniting us.”
