This is from my next door neighbor, Chris, who owns a small, tourist oriented business in Pigeon Forge, TN. He said I could share his story. I have edited it a little to make it understandable to the general public.
“ I’ve been working a lot even though there isn’t business in town. I’ve let my employees go and I’m working their hours.
People don’t understand how less full [this] town really is.
[My wife] drives Uber Eats.
I’m hoping to pick a job up at Ole Smoky selling moonshine and use my charming personality to get tips.
I could easily land an IT job in KNX but I’d rather keep my attention on keeping my business, and Ole Smoky is close by.
That’s how bad the leisure spending part of economy is right now.
Look at Vegas; it’s empty and has been for a few months in a row.
Almost every business owner I know , along with the chamber of commerce meetings it has been said over town was down 40-50%.
I closed out the year way, way, way down.
I have proof, easily connectable dots that point to each time he [Trump] shot a hole in tourism with one thing or another. We used to get a surge of Cubans at the end of the year and around March Canadians came in droves.
The Canadians hate us. I waited like a fool on the Canadians last year until I put it together. They aren’t coming back with this guy in office.
The Cubans won Florida for Trump. I promise, I’ve asked what few Cubans we saw where the rest were and when I say “rest” I mean, I get maybe 700 customers in a week. For 2 sometimes 3 weeks. They say a LOT have been deported. The rest were in hiding; they don’t go out of their homes.
ICE is in my prior home’s backyard now.
Seems hard to tell what my end of East Tennessee thinks. Maybe it’s 50/50 right now. I’m surprised that liberals are out and about. I thought I was alone up there all these years.
Sorry about all that. I rant.
Trump has me working 2 jobs, currently so I guess I can’t even protest now.
Maybe he actually is a stable genius?”
