On Politics: These Americans say they’ll move abroad if their candidate loses
Good evening! Lots of people muse about leaving the country if an election doesn't go their way. My colleague, Ronda Kaysen, who covers real estate, spoke with Americans who say they're actually planning to. Plus, we look at what it's like to listen to a whole speech by former President Trump. — Jess Bidgood
Exit strategies: These Americans say they'll move abroad if their candidate loses
The latest, with 18 days to go
In Boston, Steven Seltzer, the 73-year-old son of a Holocaust survivor, was raised to prepare for the worst. So in 2022, 83 years after his mother fled Nazi Germany, he became a German citizen, along with his two grown sons, providing his family an out should Donald Trump win the November election. He was "trained to be vigilant and these were exactly the signs you were supposed to be looking for," he said. In Virginia Beach, Robert Horton, a Republican, is making plans to move by the end of the year to Paris, where he qualified for a long-stay visa. Certain Kamala Harris will win the presidential election in November, Horton, a 78-year-old real estate developer, does not want to stay in a country headed in a direction he sees as terrifying. "God knows we've lost respect for our country, for our people, for ourselves, for our standards," he told me. "It's a terrible country now compared to what it used to be." These two men were among the nearly 2,000 Times readers who responded to a question I posed in this newsletter over the summer: Would Americans consider moving abroad should their preferred candidate lose the presidential election? Another 3,000 people responded to similar questions I posted on social media. After reading through the responses, I could see that answer was, by and large, "yes" (or, at the very least, a strong "maybe"). Your reasons were varied, but the refrain struck a common chord: Many of you think the fate of the country, and your place in it, hangs in the balance depending on who occupies the White House next year. Making moves to move"I'm moving to Canada" has long been a liberal refrain, but we heard from conservative voters considering leaving the country, too, as well as people who were fed up with both parties. It's relatively easy to vacation abroad as an American, but obtaining residency in another country is far more complicated. Over more than 30 interviews for a story about Americans who are packing up and leaving, I asked what had driven these decisions, and how people had been able to establish life in another country. Many of the people I interviewed feared that the country could descend into authoritarianism should Trump win the election. Some worried about how Harris would handle the war in Gaza and the economy. While the candidates at the top of the ticket figured prominently, some people expressed more general angst about issues like abortion rights, gun violence, racism or economic issues. I noticed patterns in the words readers chose to respond to my query. The word "fascist" or "fascism" appeared 101 times. "Terrified," "scared," "frightened" or "frightening" was used in 119 responses. In 125 responses, readers voiced safety concerns for themselves or an L.G.B.T.Q. family member, including several parents who feared that their transgender children might not receive the care they need in a Trump administration. In 49 responses, readers mentioned "abortion" or "Roe v. Wade." "It's not about romanticizing some life abroad," Megan Carney, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona who studies migration, told me. "This is about the conditions here becoming untenable for more and more people." Decamping for Canada, Mexico and VietnamFreya Wilson, 25, who is transgender, decided to leave Utah with her partner after learning about Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term compiled by the Heritage Foundation. Wilson was most concerned about language in the document that calls for restricting medical coverage for transition surgeries and related health care and ending regulations that protect workers from job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. "My partner and I were scared," she said. Rather than wait for the election results, the couple found jobs teaching English in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, arriving there this past January. "If it turns out we didn't ever need to get out, then that's great." Roughly 5.4 million Americans currently live abroad, according to the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, a nonpartisan association for Americans living outside the country. Canada, Mexico and Britain are common destinations for American emigrants. Respondents I corresponded with were heading to these countries as well as other destinations including Portugal, Panama, France, Vietnam and Thailand. They were overwhelmingly people in their prime working years, not students or wealthy travelers. There were people like Sara Dawn O'Dell, a 42-year-old obstetrician who, a year ago, moved from Olympia, Wash., to British Columbia out of fear of a national abortion ban should Republicans retake the White House. Even though Trump has said he wouldn't support one, she didn't want to take any chances. "We felt like we knew what was coming," she told me. Sarah Malone, 44, who is Jewish, left Wisconsin for Mexico over the summer because she worried about growing antisemitism on the left after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. "I thought this kind of Jew hatred was only something I'd read in history books," she told me. Malone places the blame with the Democrats, and told me that if they win she'll never return. Not everyone planned to leave if the candidate they opposed won. Chiffon Kinney, 61, a nurse in Dallas, is voting for Trump because she thinks if he wins, the economy will improve and she'll be in a better position to retire early and leave the U.S., possibly for either Panama or France. If Harris wins, she expects that the economy will struggle, and she will have to work longer, saying, "At the end of the day, it comes down to money." And with enough money, Ms. Kinney can leave.
Counting down during a Trump speechIt can be difficult to capture the experience of listening to a winding Trump campaign speech — which can sometimes stretch for up to two hours — on the page. But my colleague Michael Bender did just that in the tail end of his story about how Trump's meandering speeches are worrying some of his allies. Here's what he wrote: In Prescott Valley, Ariz., on Sunday, Mr. Trump's scripted remarks hewed tightly to the anti-immigration message that has become central to his campaign. He stayed on track for the first half-hour of the event before taking a more scenic route to the finish. After about 25 minutes, he told the crowd he wanted to tell "one quick story" about a friend with a car plant in Mexico. But he never finished his tale. Instead, he lost the thread one minute later as he complained that if he mispronounced one word he would be accused of being "cognitively impaired." Then, he botched the phrase by saying President Biden was the one who was "cognitively repaired" and referred to the election as three and a half months away, not three and a half weeks. About 20 minutes later, Mr. Trump seemed ready to wrap up his speech. He promised the crowd would see him again soon and said he was thinking about residents on the East Coast suffering after the recent storms. "So in closing," Mr. Trump continued, "I just want to say Kamala Harris is a radical left Marxist rated even worse than Bernie Sanders or Pocahontas." He proceeded to speak for 17 more minutes. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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