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Our friends at Wide Angle Youth Media in Baltimore, Maryland talked with local youth to get their reactions to the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America.
Joshua White, 20
Just knowing the ideas that Donald Trump had for America, such as kicking foreigners out of America and taking away things like food stamps and all these harsh ideas…the amount of Americans that had sided right along with him it kind of made me disappointed as a citizen.
For the next four years, Donald Trump has already given African Americans a name. I feel like a lot of his followers and voters are going to start looking at us a certain way and we’re going to be judged, like, a whole lot differently. In a different light now.
Katia Crawford, 17
I honestly think that the voting should be lowered to 17 because I know that there are quite a few seniors… who want to vote, and can’t vote at all. I’m one of those people. It made me really sad. I was kinda shocked to hear the news and it really made me disappointed, and it just really made me want to vote… I think four years is too long for me to wait.
Brian Thompson, 18
There are people out there [who didn’t vote] that are highly upset, but they can’t be mad at nobody but themselves. They had the power and opportunity to change that, but they didn’t take advantage of it… There’s no excuse for that. The only logical reason that I can think of is that people were just lazy. They simply don’t care. How could you not care about your own country? How could you not vote for a person you want to represent the country. How you just gonna let anybody get into office? People can’t be mad at anybody but themselves.
Tahir Juba, 18
I didn’t stay up watching the election results. I was doing homework… and went to sleep Hillary was [ahead]. When I woke up the next morning I looked on Twitter… and I saw that Trump won and I was like like: “Uh. Gotta be a joke.” Because Twitter is home of jokes. But later I realized it wasn’t a joke, and I was just lost for words. Very shocked. As a Muslim it could put a stigma on me, my family and other Muslims that I know. Giving us a sense of inferiority.