DE SOTO, Iowa (AP) — Standing alongside his son’s Ford pickup truck at a central Iowa gas station off Interstate 80, Francisco Castillo was not happy.
He had voted for President Donald Trump in the last election. He believed Trump had strengthened the economy in his first term, and he wanted more of that.
“I thought that he was going to bring some of those things back,” said Castillo, a 43-year-old factory worker. And now? “He said he was going to bring gas down, but the war in Iran is now making everything worse.”
It seems a country divided on so many fronts is finding common ground in pain at the pump, where the cost of the Iran war is hitting Americans squarely in the wallet and aggravating people across the political spectrum.
For Castillo and many others filling their tanks on Monday at gas stations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina and Iowa, it was a reminder that politicians’ promises aren’t going to pay the bills.