'I'd be open to it': Trump voters warming up to impeachment as president's Ukraine story unravels

In one of the pieces that both the Washington Post and the New York Times are famous for, a visit to talk to Donald Trump voters outside the Beltway about how they feel about the president three years after the election reveals cracks in his support as more information becomes available about his Ukraine phone call that precipitated an impeachment inquiry.

According to the Post's report, they ventured out to Staten Island, or specifically: "New York’s 11th Congressional District, a swath of the country as good a place as any to gauge how a defining moment in American democracy is playing out."

Describing the district as "... a sliver of un-gentrified Brooklyn and all of Staten Island, the 'forgotten borough' of New York City that is home to many civil servants, police officers, firefighters and the Wu-Tang Clan," the Post added, "It has an expressway that locals call the 'Mason-Dixon line,' which roughly divides the more diverse, more Democratic northern crescent of the borough from the whiter, more Republican rest of it. Its voters backed Donald Trump for president in 2016 and elected to Congress in 2018 a Democratic centrist named Max Rose who has called progressives 'hipster socialists' and a GOP opponent 'a mouth-pisser.'"

Zeroing in of self-professed Trump voters, the Post's Stephanie McCrummen found some steadfast supporters, but more than a few who now have their doubts about Trump.

As Joe Tompkins, who described himself as both a “gay sheet metal worker,” and a "disillusioned Democrat turned Trump supporter," presidential impeachment may be called for.

"He had watched the Democratic leader of the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), paraphrase the complaint during a congressional hearing, and thought Schiff was 'a total joke,'" the Post reports. "He had seen how Trump was reacting, and thought the president was 'a total and complete buffoon' capable of anything, and all of this had left him saying, 'I’d be open to it if I saw that the facts were there.'"

Tompkins was not the only one to have reservations about Trump now.

Trump supporter Robert Rusello chimed in to say, "Don’t get me wrong. If he did something illegal with — who was it, Turkey? Or Syria? “Ukraine! That’s the thing. If he did something illegal, then that’s no good.”

Candace Crupi, a Trump supporter, added, "Maybe some of it has some validity.”

Richard Wickstrom, described as a "reluctant Trump supporter," admitted he has become obsessed with the unfolding drama and now is leaning towards impeachment depending on what comes out of the House inquiry.

“I think what he did was wrong," he explained. “Was he criminal in it? I don’t know. I think he went overboard. Was it a treasonous thing? “I want to see what comes out of the woodwork."

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