“Relief.” “Scared.” “Pathetic.” “It’s looking good” “Chaotic.” "Pleasantly surprised.”
That’s how some Coloradans describe the first days of President Donald Trump’s new administration.
CPR News checked back in with nine voters from across the state who we talked with ahead of the November election.
Those with more conservative views describe the past two weeks as a hopeful start to put the country back on the right track. For voters on the other side of the political spectrum, it's a time of hopelessness and fear.
‘It is looking good’
Republican John McCord lives in Akron on the Eastern Plains. He’s nearly 70 and a diehard Trump supporter. He likes everything Trump is focused on, including his territorial ambitions for the Panama Canal and Greenland. McCord hopes under the new administration the U.S. can become stronger and better.
“People need to give Trump a chance,” he said. “It is looking good.”
McCord is especially glad about the pardons and commutations of the Jan. 6th rioters. Although he concedes there was violence during the storming of the Capitol, he believes many of the people charged and convicted did nothing wrong.
“They had no right to tear down things and break windows and assault people,” said McCord. “You have no right to do none of that. But I think it's just a mob mentality gets out of hand, and it's mob rule.”
But he points to the pardons President Joe Biden issued during his final months in office as justification for Trump’s. And while he said maybe Trump could have looked at some of the more violent rioters a little harder before setting them free, he doesn’t think he should have because they were "treated wrong from the get go.”
‘Actually following through’
Republican voter Jared Reid from Colorado Springs didn’t expect Trump to pardon or commute the sentences of people who assaulted police officers during the riot. He wishes those cases had instead gotten individual reviews. But, overall, he’s happy with the pardons and the rest of Trump’s first actions in office.
“It's great that we've had this first week of things kind of fall into place that we were all hoping for,” he said.
Reid said he’s glad border security is a top priority for Trump and supports his cabinet picks, like Robert Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who Reid hopes will remove “ultra woke people” out of key positions in the military, which he says has hurt the armed forces’ lethality.
“I listen to podcasts and I listen to these people who are being confirmed,” said Reid. “What their takes are, on not only the very complicated foreign affairs issues, but also how they felt about the football game last Sunday or whatever. And they seem like they are real people.”
Reid said it’s a relief to feel like he knows who’s in charge at the White House right now.
“If I were to ask you, unequivocally, who was running the executive office of our country the last year, could you with a straight face say Joe Biden was?” he asked.
‘Surprising in a good way’
Trump’s swift moves to upend federal spending, and focus on the border please Nicholas Krick of New Castle in western Colorado.
The unaffiliated voter describes himself as apolitical. He didn’t vote in the last election, but said there are a lot of things he likes when Republicans are in power, and with this Trump administration in particular.
“I am just surprised that somebody's actually following through with some of the things that they've promised,” he said, pointing to the budget office’s short-lived effort to freeze federal spending. He hopes having less federal money to spend will rein in the Democrats who control the state government.
Krick also hopes Trump continues his hold on nearly all funding for foreign aid projects. “Putting other countries and other countries' wars ahead of the needs of our country is bothersome to me.”
‘So much damage in a week’
On the more liberal side of the spectrum, voters told CPR News they are distraught, and tired.
Democratic voter Ramana Konantz works at a library in Grand Junction. She said those in her social circle, which includes many immigrants and LGBTQ people, are afraid and just “focusing on how to survive.”
Konantz worries that without a strong opposition to Trump’s actions, “it's giving the impression to the conservative elements that they've won and that they have sort of defeated everyone.”
Konantz, who uses female pronouns but doesn’t identify with either gender, is especially upset about Trump’s executive order mandating the federal government only recognize two sexes, calling it very damaging and unscientific.
“It's sort of striking to me that he can do so much damage in a week.”
She’d like national Democrats to do more to try to delay and disrupt Republicans in Congress and the Trump agenda.
“There's not a lot of charismatic leaders on the Left right now that are publicly visible. We don't have sort of a rallying point,” said Konantz. “Strategically, that's something that liberals and those on the Left need to be thinking about as they’re organizing.”
‘Extremely overwhelming and difficult’
Lois Voeltz, a Democratic voter from Woodland Park in southern Colorado, said she’s limiting her political news intake because it’s too distressing. She’s deeply worried for her grandchildren.
“We lived 14 years in Asia and we saw upfront and personal as to how corrupt governments slowly began,” she said. “How they take over and what they do.”
Voeltz is somewhat embarrassed that she's not following daily developments closely, but said she also has to think about her mental health. It's different from eight years ago, when she felt more hope that opposing Trump could change things.
Like Voeltz, Tracy Squillace of Lakewood is also feeling worn down.
She’s worried about funding for programs that help people like her 15-year-old son who has developmental disabilities and said the policies of the new administration are worse than she thought they’d be, in particular, “the swiftness that he and his administration have made decisions and rolled back what I would say are policies and funding for just basic human rights and needs.”
In those decisions she sees Project 2025, the conservative guidebook to reshaping the country, being implemented. “It’s coming to life,” she said. “I guess I didn't think that could happen, and that's my naivete.”
She said right now Democrats are a party unified in grief. She said part of her just feels like binge watching ‘The Real Housewives’ on Netflix just to “totally disassociate with what's happening because you feel powerless.”
‘I don’t see an end to this chaos’
For Fran Arieta-Walden of Denver, whose family is from Puerto Rico, Trump’s deportation plans, and his comments about people of color, have been some of the hardest things about the past two weeks.
“This isn't about safety, it's not about crime, it's not about any of that,” she said. “This is racist, this is what he does.”
The Democrat said she’d like the president’s opponents to be louder, but she doesn’t think there’s really much they can do to stop Trump.
“I just don't see an end to this chaos,” she said. “This is how he governs, if you can call it governing. This is what it is. It happened in the first administration and now it's just doubling down because he got himself a second term and his people feel emboldened.”
‘Seems very political’
Casey Rippy of Castle Rock is a former Democrat turned split ticket unaffiliated voter. He backed former Vice-President Kamala Harris because he said she seemed more down to earth but he thinks Democrats focus on the wrong things about the Trump administration. It’s irritating, he said, to see liberal friends in his social media feed highlight Elon Musk’s use of a gesture reminiscent of the Nazi salute during the inauguration.
“I feel like that's kind of been the go-to for the left for eight years now, is that (Trump) courts Nazis and white supremacists. When I think if you actually look at the evidence, that's not very true, and I think most people like myself don't find that to be true,” said Rippy.
But that doesn’t mean Rippy is happy with how Trump’s second administration has started.
He’s concerned about the Jan. 6th pardons. And he doesn’t think Trump is focused on the things a lot of people care about, like his pledge during the campaign to get rid of taxes on overtime pay and tips. Rippy said if that was really a top priority it would have been in the initial batch of executive orders.
“So that seems very political to me. It's like this is kind of like Santa Claus: here's my gift to you if you vote for me, and then as soon as I get in the office, that really doesn't concern me that much,” said Rippy.
‘Hope for the best’
Brian Holman of Lakewood, another unaffiliated voter, said the policies of the first two weeks have been haphazard and not well thought through.
“It kind of seems like he's handed a lot of the responsibility of government finances to Elon Musk, which I don't know if that's a great idea either,” said Holman.
He voted for Harris over Trump, even though he didn’t think either candidate was the best choice.
Holman said he tries not to worry too much about federal policies because of how little control he has over them, but he does see how Trump’s actions are causing stress and uncertainty for a lot of Americans, from stepped-up ICE deportations to temporarily shutting down Medicaid. He’s also unhappy with the pardons of the Jan. 6th rioters.
“That's crazy to me. A literal insurrection gets pardoned. It's just like, ‘oh my God, is that the precedent we're setting here?’”
But still, he said, he’s trying not to let any of it bother him.
“I just hope it's not a chaotic or violent four years,” said Holman. “Just hope for some stability, hope for the best.”
