WIGGINS, Colorado – Perched behind the cash register at Stubs liquor store, Amy Van Duyn gazed out the window at a red-and-green gasoline price sign, which she said seemed to tick up daily.
The price was $4.34 per gallon – about 50% higher than it was in these parts when President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.
“I used to fill my tank for $36,” said Van Duyn, 42. “Now $36 gets me half a tank.”
Her co-worker Tonyah Bruyette said when it’s time to buy groceries, she’s left wondering where all her money went: “We’re putting it in the tank rather than on our table.”
Like most people in and around Wiggins, a farming town of 1,400 people in northeast Colorado, Van Duyn and Bruyette remain ardent supporters of the president, who won surrounding Morgan County by 49 percentage points in 2024.
Nationally, Trump’s political fortunes appear to be waning. His war with Iran has sent fuel prices soaring past $4.50 a gallon nationwide, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found nearly 8 in 10 Americans hold the president responsible for higher gasoline prices.
Trump was asked this week if people’s economic woes were motivating him to reach a deal with Tehran. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” he responded. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Democrats seized on the comments as evidence of an administration losing touch with an anxious public. Only 30% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy as of a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, an issue that had long been one of his political strengths.
But in two dozen recent interviews along Colorado’s Highway 52 — a two-lane blacktop road punctuated by grain elevators, feedlots and oil pumpjacks — Trump voters echoed the president’s logic.
