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CLEVELAND – Ivanka Trump was his favorite convention speaker, but her father was “too brash” and pessimistic about America, even though the nation is “off track,” Cleveland resident Clarence Swindler told WND while traveling on a commuter train west of downtown after the Republican National Convention.
Swindler, a Democrat, was pleased that his city hosted the GOP event.
“I was impressed that we were able to get the RNC here,” he said with a smile. “It was a really good feeling.”
Swindler, 59 and currently unemployed due to medical issues, said he enjoyed some of the speeches and particularly liked Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
But he didn’t like the attacks on Hillary Clinton, noting that on the night of Trump’s speech, someone dressed up in a costume portraying Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and handcuffs.
“That was kind of much to me,” he said.
Swindler said the controversy over accusations that Melania Trump’s speechwriter plagiarized Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech sucked away a lot of attention.
“They let that go for so long, instead of saying, ‘You know, it happened, she’s sorry about it, she liked some things (about Michelle Obama’s speech), and then it would have been over with.”
Instead, he said, it “dragged on for three days” and “took a lot away from the convention.”
“It made you think about that more than you thought about what [Trump] was going to do as president,” he said.
Trump ‘kind of scared me’
Swindler said that prior to the convention, he expected the event would “lighten up” his unfavorable feelings toward Trump.
“It didn’t, it didn’t at all,” he said.
“He kind of scared me a bit, because some of the things he says and he does is a bit odd to me.”
NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls earlier this month in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania found zero African-American voters indicating they would vote for Trump in November. Nationwide, a Quinnipiac University poll found Trump had 1 percent support among African-Americans while Hillary Clinton had 91 percent.
Swindler described Trump as a bit “brash and over the top,” specifying the Republican nominee’s personal insults of Hillary Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and others.
He also thought Trump painted an overly negative view of America.
“I was shocked about how he thought of America as just so bad. Like, if you would go outside, you would be immediately attacked by someone,” he said.
“He had you on edge like, ‘Wow, is it really that bad?’
‘We are off track’
Swindler said his choice of Clinton for president is not just because she’s a Democrat.
“I want something to happen for America; that’s what I’m looking at,” he said. “It’s not really Republican or Democrat. I just want the best person who’s going to do the job to get us back on track, because, as [Trump] did say, we are off track.”
But Swindler still insisted things are not as bad as Trump makes them out to be.
He said Obama has done “a good job,” pointing to Obamacare as one success.
Swindler explained that he pays nothing for his health care.
“I still have the same doctors that I had when I was with Medical Mutual, which was a very good policy, because I was working at colleges,” he said.
Race: ‘We do have a ways to go’
Asked his view of the state of racial relations in America, Swindler said he was “kind of stunned” that Trump didn’t discuss the recent incidents of black men being killed by police in places such as Baton Rouge and Minnesota until the police killings this month in Dallas and other cities.
“And that was a bad thing,” he said of the police shootings. “I never thought that would happen. That was really a bad thing.
“But some of the things going on before that which made that come to play were the things that were happening with many men or people getting pulled over by the police,” he said.
“We do have a ways to go,” he said, regarding race relations. “We do have a long ways to go, with the racial unrest that is in America.”
Noting that many hoped the first African-American president would help heal racial relations, Swindler was asked if he agreed with those who believe the situation is worse now than before Obama came into office.
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s worse. I think it’s always been like that,” he said.
“With me being an African-American male, I’ve dealt with this all of my life.
“I’ve always been, not leery of the police, but expected to do exactly what they say, scared that anything might happen,” he said.
He said he’s had some incidents with police, “but I grin and bear it.”
“I think a lot of people grin and bear it. It’s a way of life,” he said. “After a while you tend to, like I said, take it in stride.”
