Tearful business owner in MAGA city details pain Trump’s policies are causing

Although 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried a handful of western states — including California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — Nevada and Arizona were nail-biters that Donald Trump won by single digits in the end. Utah, however, remained deep red, with Trump winning it by 22 percent.

Yet one of Utah's biggest employers, an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) center in Ogden, is being adversely affected by the mass layoffs of federal workers being carried out by the Trump Administration with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Now, Ogden is receiving another financial blow thanks to the partial government shutdown that went into effect on October 1.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" took a look at Ogden's troubles in a report aired on Friday morning, October 3.

Reporting from Ogden, MSNBC's Rosa Flores described the "trickle-down effect" that the IRS center's problems are having in the Utah city: When IRS workers have less money to spend, the local businesses that they patronize also take a hit.

Flores emphasized that the businesses' "bottom lines" are hurting, adding, "There's also an emotional toll to the business owners who really devote their heart and soul to those businesses."

Flores interviewed Larry Whitnack, a 78-year-old man who, she reported, "had a coffee shop here on this street for 20 years," Jesse Jean's Café, before he had to close down. The business, according to Whitnack, suffered a range of hardships — from a previous government shutdown to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A tearful Whitnack told Flores, "It was family. The people we got to know — and so many have come and gone. So many have lived and died that it's provided life experience for me I never would have had without Jesse Jean's Café."

Flores told MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire, "You probably heard the emotion in Larry's voice. And he said that that pain is the price of human connection. And he said that human connection is what's missing in Washington right now. That human connection is what he says can cross the divides and unite America."