At 4 a.m. Wednesday, CNN had not yet called the presidential race for Donald J. Trump. The headline read, “Trump on the Brink of Victory.” Two and a half hours later, when Grindstone Coffee & Donuts in East Hampton Village opened, the Associated Press had called the swing state Wisconsin for Trump, putting him at 276 electoral votes. The race that had felt interminable was over.
Early reactions at the coffee shop were mixed.
Dia Hollenbeck, an interior designer, ordered a coffee and offered, “I’ve been anxious since yesterday. I’m nauseous.” When asked if she had a comment on the election, she said she was “livid. I’m beyond. I have two daughters who I had to look at their eyes this morning and basically say, ‘You’re going to be on birth control when you’re 12 and 14.’ Portugal is looking pretty good right now.”
There was also jubilation.
Lyndsey Fagerland, wearing a T-shirt that pictured Trump in front of the White House with the words “Daddy’s Home” and holding her young daughter on her hip said, “I’m excited. I feel like my faith is restored in the future. Our hard work is not going to waste. To be just scraping by here is not a good feeling. The economy was the biggest thing for me. I’m also really excited about Mr. Kennedy being part of the team. He’s so hyper focused on making food healthy for our children. He’s going to take the poison out of our food. It’ll be nice to pick up a box of cereal and not have to worry about what I’m putting in my children’s stomach. We’re fired up.”
“I feel good about it,” said Gene Grossane, who lives in East Hampton. “Maybe we’ll get back to a sense of normalcy as far as securing the border and getting our economy straight, because we’ve just been going in the wrong direction. And I don’t think anyone has to worry about being put in a camp,” he added.
Another young mother from East Hampton, who works in the travel business and would provide only her first name, also has two young children. When asked if she had a comment on the election, her eyes welled with tears.
“I don’t think I’m surprised really. I think I was hopeful for a different type of result, but I think I’m not surprised. It’s just very sad. It boils down to, I have kids and I’m trying to grow them with certain values, and one of them is to not be a bully. What I saw last night is people voted in the bully, the sex offender, you name it. That’s sad.”
She had grown up in Italy and likened Trump voters to those who voted for Silvio Berlusconi. She wondered if Americans understand the threat that she felt is posed by a second Trump administration. “You guys never had it here, physically at home,” she said, speaking of fascism. “It was always somewhere else.”
Indeed, a young man, an exchange student from Germany named Jakob Jaede, visiting the East End on holiday break, offered some thoughtful remarks on fascism. “Fascism, from a German perspective, it’s hard to compare. It’s clear it’s not the same. But there is a dangerous similarity to this time the way the rallies are held. The fascists always tried to polarize and split people. That’s pretty clear. In this way, fascism finds its place. That’s similar in the way it went in Germany, people were angry, and someone came in with an apparent solution. It’s important not to fall for easy solutions and think about it. Don’t fall for it.”
A man grabbed a coffee. “I had to get out of the house,” he said. “I was up all night watching it. Every news channel is just wigging out.” Another woman wouldn’t offer her comments “out loud” but said she had just had a hard talk with her two young granddaughters, whom she dropped off at school.
The overall sense in this blue corner of red Suffolk County, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, handing him a nearly 11-point victory, was less surprise and more resignation.
“My daughters are in college, and they’ve been very moved by it,” said Sue de Lara, a travel agent who lives in East Hampton. “One said, ‘I’m so glad I renewed my German passport,’ “ However, she noted that in Germany her relatives are worried about the apparent rise of Nazism again, with a growing percentage of voters identifying as such. “They feel it and they were watching this election. They want to see how it’s going to impact Russia and Ukraine.”
A woman sitting with her, who asked not to be named, said, “I just don’t think the Democrats did as good of a job convincing people as the Republicans did. It’s a big country and there’s lots of different people in it. The Republicans ran a better campaign.”
Beth Feit, who lives in Springs, faulted the Democrats less for Kamala Harris’s loss and instead cited the lack of critical thinking as the iceberg that sank the ship. “I had a more idealistic vision,” she said. “I was hopeful that people would just be a little more critical, but they believe his lies,” she said of Trump. “It doesn’t matter what he says.”
Joshua Rosario, a private chef who lives in East Hampton Village, said, “What I didn’t want, happened. But now that he’s won, I’ve got to just keep doing what I’ve been doing. I’m Puerto Rican. Once I heard what was said at his rally, I had to go out and vote. My family, we just came from John Papas [Cafe], because my family said we need to talk. My mother is an immigration attorney and she’s worried about the outcome. Last time he was conducting raids on people, good or bad, it didn’t matter. She’s afraid it’s going to happen again, and good people are going to get hurt.”
