This week, President Donald Trump pulled the trigger on more tariffs. Now stay with me here. Stay with me. I know tariffs is a boring word, but this is important and it could affect you soon.

He has implemented the 25% blanket tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Those took effect this morning. But then he also bumped up tariffs on China from 10% to 20%. And immediately we've seen some of these countries retaliate with tariffs of their own.

Yes. Trump used tariffs during his first term. He slapped them on solar panels and washing machines. Steel and aluminum. The ones he placed on China were even kept in place by the Biden administration. But here's the thing. This latest round dwarfs those in size and scope. Over 40% of America's imports come from the countries Trump has targeted here.

They can't come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished, and they're being punished by tariffs.

The question is, will U.S. consumers be punished as well? Analysts say everything from food, cars to electronics will likely get more expensive as a result. And this is a precarious time for the economy. Inflation continues to be an issue and consumer sentiment is falling. Remember, these are problems. Trump said he was given a mandate to fix. You can see some frustration in Trump's poll numbers, including recent CNN data, which showed a majority of people, 52%, say they think Trump has not paid enough attention to the country's most important problems. But does that extend to Trump's most diehard supporters? What do they make of Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government? And just how much possible financial pain are they willing to take? Today. CNN's Lee Reeve takes us to deep red Georgia. To find out from CNN this is one thing. I'm David Rind.

So Elle, I describe your beat here at CNN as locating the messy intersection of politics and people. Does that sound about right?

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty accurate. How do regular people experience politics?

Okay. And so you've been doing that in one particular part of Georgia, right? Tell me about Brantley County.

'Brantley County was the most pro-Trump county in 2020, in any swing state. So it went by more than 91% for Trump in 2024. They got 500 more votes for Trump in than county. So it went ever so slightly. Even more for Trump. Wow. Brantley County is rural, mostly white. It's not one of those places where there was a lot of industry, and it left because there was never a lot of industry there, not a lot of government jobs there either. So when I went in October, I mean, there are absolutely thrilled for Trump. I met a woman who ran a small boutique, and what really kept boutique going in this tiny downtown was the corner of her store that she sold. Trump merch, like the rest of the store is frilly girly dresses and earrings and stuff. But the Trump t shirts was what paid the bills. And while I was there, I met a woman named Cheri Russell who invited me to go with her to a graveyard where she put a Trump sign on the grave of her 17 year old grandson, who had died in an accident. His parents later showed up and told me that he, once he'd gotten his first job and had to pay taxes. I got really interested in politics and became very pro-Trump and would want everyone to know that that's what he believed. So they put the sign up because he couldn't speak for himself anymore. It's an illustration of how close the emotional relationship is with Trump.

It's like blended not only into their local economy, but like who they are as people.

Who they are. Yeah. I mean, part of what we did while we were down there was like, can we find a Democrat? And everyone we talked to about that just thought that was so funny. They're like, well, no one would ever admit it. So we wanted to go back. Now that Trump has been in office for a month to see what they made of the executive orders of his actions so far. What did they think of Elon Musk? I mean, one thing they had lost was that when they were kids, the Democrats were for the poor people and Republicans for the rich people or the elites. But that had somehow switched. And Trump was for people like them, what Democrats were for the elites. So I was wondering, like, okay, well, what do you think of Elon Musk, a South African billionaire Er who wasn't elected. And is this like relationship with the government where he's not fully inside, not fully outside. Musk was doing things that I didn't remember them talking to me about in our interviews. No, they hadn't ranted about the size of the government or foreign aid.

Well, so what did they think about the job that Trump and Musk Kevin doing?

To be honest, they loved it. So our first night in Berlin County, we went to a horror show at the high school. And this is where kids kind of parade around a pig. People auction it off for charity. I spoke to several folks there, and one of them was Josh Evan Kirkland, who told me that he couldn't think of a smarter man than Elon Musk.

Do you not find it unsettling at all that like, one guy, this one billionaire who's not even from here is bringing in these, like, very young friends to this not quite official. Government agency. Get access to payment information. All kinds of sensitive information gets the ability to just fire huge portions. I mean, there's 2 million people who work for the federal government. There's no way they can actually analyze all of them. Does that give you pause?

You know somebody smarter.

Than Elon Musk?

That's right.

Um...

You do? So you're shaking your head. Yes. Well, are you cold?

The idea that being smart means you are a good person really gets under my skin, because I have covered white nationalists for so long, and they're obsessed with eugenics and their own IQ scores. And of course, they're smart people who do very bad things. I didn't want to get into all that with them. Instead, we talked about how Tesla, who Elon's car company is named for Nikola Tesla, Believed he could talk to his pigeons and got kicked out of hotels because. He'd have his windows open. Communing with these pigeons.

That does sound pretty stupid.

But he was a genius. He invented television. So you can be smart and immoral. You can be smart and make bad decisions.

You are 100% right about that. There's no doubt about that...

The point being that a smart person could do something dumb. A smart person can believe crazy things. A smart person can do immoral things. And Josh agreed with me on that, but he didn't think that apply to Musk, who's 100% on Team Musk.

You've got to bring an outside brain in who's not corrupt, who's not been corrupted by. Big businesses paying somebody off.

You got a lot of subsidies to run his electric car company.

Yes he did. I'm sure he did.

He's got a lot of government contracts for SpaceX...

I'm sure he's paid tremendous amount of taxes on the money he's made on that stuff.

Yes, but I'm just saying he's not an unspoiled, pure as the driven snow.

I'm not saying I'm not. I'm not saying that he is. Okay. So don't don't take that the wrong way. But you've got to have an outsider come in. And like I said, I mean, right back to you got to have an outsider come in to cut nuts.

It was like stunning to me. There are multiple times when people kind of got emotional with me.

Southern hospitality. It's a little bit of me. I had to get up at noon.

At a diner. I was asking a man I had met the previous time. You know, he'd kind of held court. He had very conservative positions.

I want interest rates to be it a and a reasonable rate of inflation to be at a reasonable level.

You know, but we had a decent rapport. So I was asking like, well, now do you really trust Elon Musk? He is also a government contractor. He's done some out there, thinks he's smoked pot on camera. Like, do you really think he has the judgment to do what he's doing? And he just got really upset. I mean, the conversation got very, very heated.

You're trying to bash him for the same thing that your party is trying to get legalized all over the daggun country.

One, not my party. Not my party.

He felt like I was attacking Musk's character for something he must have ten years ago. That didn't matter. Besides, lots of people smoke weed. Like he didn't quite believe me either. I was like, it's on video. Like he did it on Joe Rogan. Like I will show you video. He did it on.

TV, he said on TV and smoke pot.

On the video.

And that no matter what makes you qualified to do it.

Oh, I'm just saying, does it.

He just said the.

Question, does I.

Believe you with ignorant arguments?

Does it does it raise any questions about his job.

As a Democrat by the level of ignorance that you portray.

Let's just show it. You want me to show it to you? I'll just do it.

I need to see it.

Okay. That's different.

I don't hear you.

Okay.

Okay. In this war, I see an enterprise made over. That's why it has no credibility.

And, you know, he's, like, storms out of the restaurant. Like, as he's getting up, he's like. You're telling me. He said on camera and smoked weed. And I was like, yes. I'm like, I'm not lying. But it like, almost didn't matter. He still stormed out. He like, stormed out. Looks at the cameras, is like trail Van Allen drain the swamp.

I really want somebody else to answer. Yes, yes, yes. You know, we all must be so bad. He's evil, and he needs to go to jail because he's getting on their toes and he's doing it. And somewhere they don't want dug in to drain the swamp. If you want to put someone, they're not saying drain the swamp. Normal drug dealer must please drain this role while there. Get the job done. Please.

I was just struck by, like, how personal he took it.

Yeah. What is that? I mean, because we're talking about Elon Musk and his quest to kind of downsize the federal government. Cut employees, cut the waste and the fraud as they see it. But you're telling me that, you know, they're getting emotional about this kind of stuff? So where do you think that comes from?

They feel like Trump is fighting for them and actually doing stuff for them. You know, if I would ask about, you know, some problems and some of the money being cut off from different federal agencies, they'd say, well, Trump might have made the call to cut the money, but then the people who had to execute it, maybe they did it wrong.

The people in Atlanta just shut off all the money, shut off all the money to all the daycares in the state of Georgia.

Like this woman was telling this to the story of the daycares losing their federal subsidies, and that wasn't supposed to happen. That was thought of someone in Atlanta, not the fault of Trump.

And it took a week of phone calls and people and trips to Atlanta and whatnot to for them to get their money, you know, started getting their money back. But that was, you know, so that was an executive order that he made, but they just took it and interpreted the wrong way. Now, do I say everything that he does is right, or is going to work or going to be for the betterment of everybody? Probably not. There's going to be things that you're going to go back and say, well, that didn't work. But I believe he's a big enough man to say that didn't work. We got to try something different. He's not a scared. He's not scared to try something.

There are a couple people who would only talk to me off camera. When said that firefighters had been cut in a naval base, King's Bay, that he knew because he was also a firefighter. So this guy said, like, firefighters have it tough already. They're already short staffed. And that these firings had made it worse. Another woman told me she had a sister who worked for the federal government in Virginia.

Wait, yeah. So it does sound like it is hitting close to home for some people. And I'm thinking also the story of this company right there in Georgia that makes a special kind of peanut butter paste for severely malnourished kids. They had their USAID contracts abruptly canceled, and only after Elon Musk caught wind of our colleague M.J. Lee's reporting into the issue did they reinstate the contract. It's, you know, proof that not everything being cut is fraud or abuse or wasted office space or anything like that. But it sounds like, from what you're saying, those kinds of stories, even if people are hearing them, it doesn't necessarily change their view of Trump and Musk's overall mission.

No, they said that Trump was trying a lot of different things and that So some of the experiments wouldn't work out and they were okay with that. And I also had several people because I asked them explicitly. Several people said yes, they would accept personal financial hardship in the service of helping Trump achieve what he was trying to achieve.

How long are you like, are you giving him two years before you start getting impatient?

Like, well, I'm not going to get impatient.

I asked this woman. I was like, egg prices are still high, right? She's like, yes, it takes time to fix the economy. I was like, but under Biden, were you happy about inflation? No. She thought that was a terrible failing of the Biden presidency.

So would you be happy to pay the inflation under Trump, or are you hoping he gets that down?

Oh, I'm hoping he gets it down. But right now we can't do anything because we're maxed out. In fact, we're over maxed out...

I was like, so how long do you give Trump to bring down prices to do something about the economy, do a year or two years. She said she wasn't going to run out of patience and then just looked at me and said, Trump 2028.

And he's not perfect. He's not perfect. I don't agree with everything he does, but he's anointed right now and he's going to bring America together. We're going to be stronger than we've ever been, and my children are going to get to have some freedom that they would have had taken from them, because we were about to crack and foul. So if Elon Musk wants to cut trillions of dollars out of this budget, and my family has to tattoo on our belt and not go on vacation because of that, I'm down with that.

Does anyone not agree with what Musk is doing or even just how he's doing it?

I did run into a guy who called himself an independent, who I talked to last time, who said he thought Trump was power hungry, that he was trying to take over the courts.

I don't think that's right. They got a free pass of gum for a reason.

He was like Eli was looking into everyone else. But who's looking into Ellen?

Why wouldn't there let you know? Facial looked, you know, let you know. Yeah. What? Why, yes. The richest man in the world. And go in there and look at it. Yeah. He wasn't elected to nothing.

You know, but he's absolutely the minority in that county.

'But yeah, that's what I'm wondering, because you said that this county in particular is especially pro-Trump. You know, when you talk about all the swing states that were out there like these, these are the most die hard folks you can imagine. So how indicative do we think this is? This feeling of you have to give them time. There's experiments that they're doing. Some of them may not work. It may hurt me directly, but I'm still okay with it. Like how widespread do we think that is?

So this county, a lot of people in the county are on fixed income and they don't have a lot of money. About 20% are on food stamps. About 20% are on Medicaid. And I asked a lot of people like, are you concerned? You know, the Republican budget proposes cuts to Medicaid. There's been talk of cuts to food stamps. Like, what do you think about that?

There are some women, single mothers, kids who I'm all for helping them, I think probably need food stamps to survive.

And the first thing everyone would say is like, oh no, we absolutely have to protect our needy. But then they always had a story about, you know, being in line at the grocery store and seeing someone buy a bunch of candy with food stamps, and how there are people who abuse the system.

I think they need to do a lot better job policing that.

But surely a poor person can eat a Snickers and once in a while?

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. But when your mind energy drinks and you know just candy, all you want is just candy. Why am I paying for you just to buy candy and junk food.

Especially in every possible critique one could make of the Trump administration. They had a response, like some sort of an excuse where it wouldn't be Trump's fault that a bad thing had happened, that, like, maybe his executive orders had been executed poorly or that the people targeted were somehow deserving. There's one other thing that was really interesting. So there's this kind of infamous tweet from the official white House account that was like the title, something like ASMR Illegal Alien Deportation. But, you know, ASMR being a genre of YouTube video that's like supposed to be soothing, calming sounds. Maybe you can fall asleep too. And the video is like the clinking of the shackles that will lock up a deportee. What do you think about the white House posting that? Yeah. What were they trying to say? And I don't know if they tried to get some of those attention or if they're trying to say. And so, I mean, I asked a woman who's very nice woman, you know, what do you think of this? It does seem like a little it's a little bit harsh. I'll I will admit that seems like a little bit harsh, and I don't know. I don't know if that's just to say. That we're. And that's just to say that. Yes, we're really doing this. Yes. We're really sending these people back. We're not going to allow them to stay here. I don't I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly what that would be. I'm sure there's a reasoning behind it. But and she did look at that and say, well, I can see why people might be turned off by that. And she said that she voted for Trump even though she didn't agree with everything he did. And she often wanted to say, Donald, hush, hush your mouth, stop saying those things. So, like, that was the only time I really had someone sort of pause in their defense of Trump's actions or the White House's actions.

Well it's great reporting. Really interesting conversations, Elle. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Yeah, it was great talking to you.

One thing is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager, Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Samantha Guff and Wendy Brundage. We'll be back on Sunday. Talk to you then.