“You just don’t treat people like this,” Joe Akin, a 79-year-old engineer and Trump voter in Birmingham, said after turning off his TV in frustration.

“If you want to have a discussion with someone, you do it across the conference table, you don’t get on Facebook or whatever,” Akin said. “There’s an awful lot of things I like about Trump, but he’s got to learn he’s not running his own business.”