Janani Umamaheswar
President Trump has long espoused “tough-on-crime” rhetoric, and many of his current policy initiatives risk exacerbating challenges faced by the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, including formerly incarcerated people. Against this backdrop, I ask: How do formerly incarcerated Americans perceive President Trump and his actions? Using 44 in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated people in Florida and Virginia, I find that participants’ mixed evaluations of President Trump are tied to what he and his second presidency symbolize in participants’ own lives and for the nation more broadly. Specifically, I argue that formerly incarcerated Americans see President Trump, more so than previous presidents, as symbolic of what it means to be American. Furthermore, as the first president with felony convictions, President Trump symbolizes many formerly incarcerated Americans’ own quest for redemption and their hopes for what is possible in their own lives. These findings reveal that formerly incarcerated people are neither politically apathetic nor immune to nationalistic ideologies about America.