Us & Them: Post-Election Politics Can Be A Bit Tough To Swallow

Host Trey Kay brings together the Us & Them dinner party guests once again, this time for a candid post-election review. 

The group, representing a wide range of personal and political perspectives, shares the table for a potluck meal just days after President-elect Donald Trump’s election. Some of Kay’s dinner party guests are enthusiastic about Trump’s policies and plans for a second term, while others don’t have much of an appetite and are fearful as they reflect on the outcome of the election and their expectations for the future. 

As in many American households, there are raw feelings and honest emotions as some of the issues behind the political and social divides in our country are exposed. It’s a dinner table at which not everyone has much of an appetite. 

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the CRC Foundation and Daywood Foundation.

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This post-election dinner party was one of our most honest and emotionally charged to date. There was tension at the table — just like, we imagine, there is in many households across the nation. The results of the recent election were raw, and we asked people to speak their minds. And so seven people kept their word and sat down after a historically dysfunctional election to share a meal and their thoughts.

“I do think that people are hurting. That was the conversation that I had with my mom this summer. My mom was like, ‘I just don’t understand it. How can Black people vote for Trump?’ I explained to her — because I am someone who, as an independent, really tries to keep my ear to the streets — the people that I know that are Black and have voted for Trump, having a Black president, if you were a poor child whose parents might have been addicted to drugs, or just a poor child who had unfortunate circumstances, did Obama do something to change that for your own personal life? Or was it symbolic? They say that nothing changed, right? What have we done that has led us to a place where 20 percent of Black men vote for Trump?”

— Olubunmi Kosimo-Frazier

“What makes me feel better about the election is closing the border, price of a dozen eggs not being $5, gas less than $2, six grand daughters who won’t have to worry about a male coming into the restroom with them. Things like that.”

— Jay Gould

“This is all going to go badly, as much as [President-elect Trump] disavows [his association with Project 2025], you know, so many of the people that he’s going to be selecting for his administration are going to come from the author’s list of Project 2025. It’s going to happen. This is as bad and traumatic a time as I have lived through.”

— Elliot Hicks

“The economy spoke. I mean looking at exit polls, 80 percent from all around said the economy was their number one issue and that’s what drove them. I mean money talks and that’s the message I got.”

— Michael Borsuk

“I don’t think I feel good, but it was nice to articulate [my feelings about the election at this dinner] and to be challenged and have some new ideas of what I think a few months from now may look like. But I am still grieving, and I think I will be for a while. I think that’s OK.”

— Alexus Steele

“[Trump is] 78 years old. He legitimately has six to nine months to do something. If he doesn’t, he probably will be the most unpopular president in modern American history. Already half the country doesn’t like him, and then all these promises about food prices and things like that. If they don’t go down, I think a lot of people in the MAGA movement will start to question.”

— Frank Annie

“I think people need time to grieve. I don’t know how to make sense of all the ways I feel shook. I do still return to the fact that presidential elections are like the Superbowl of politics. As a city council member, I watched everyone turn toward this big Superbowl night, while there’s a ‘pick-up game’ every two weeks in City Hall. I voted for Kamala, but I also feel like if we’re really excited about Kamala and Walz — let’s get a Kamala on as mayor, let’s get a Walz as council president. If we do that as our offense, as we’re playing national defense for the folks that are gonna be facing real human rights peril over the next few years, if we match that, defense nationally and that offense at our local councils and village squares, that’s my prayer, that we can get to the other side.”

— Joe Solomon