ABILENE, Kan. — In the small town of Abilene, Kansas — population, 7,000 — there is no lack of signs of devotion in this Republican community to President Donald J. Trump.

They can be found in the countless Trump flags that wave from front porches, on car and truck bumper stickers, and in the 2024 voting rolls that show that 76.7% of Dickinson County, where Abilene is the county seat, voted for the president.

But there is also a Republican president who called Abilene his boyhood home and is even more dear to this community.

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, during World War II was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and led the troops who delivered the continent from fascism.

Now, and since last week — when news broke that Todd Arrington, the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home, had been pressured to resign from his job after failing to bow to a Trump administration request for the museum to hand over one of Eisenhower’s swords so that Trump could present it as a gift to King Charles III of Great Britain — residents have reacted with their own terrible swift sword.

The Trump administration, and perhaps Trump himself, they insist, was wrong. Arrington, they say, has been dealt with poorly for doing the right thing.

Abilene residents react

“I did. I absolutely did vote for him,” Trump supporter Wanda Bell, 66, said Monday, as she finished working the 4:30 a.m. shift at the local Casey’s General Store. The store on Buckeye Avenue, also known as Eisenhower Memorial Highway, sits across the street and railroad tracks from the presidential museum, currently closed because of the government shutdown.

“But that’s not his,” Bell said of the requested sword, gifted to Eisenhower himself in 1947 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. “It’s one of the treasures of our history. That’s not somebody else’s to walk in and demand.”

Bell said she serves a lot of the federal employees who work at the presidential museum, including security guards and groundskeepers.

“I serve them every morning for breakfast as they go to work,” she said. “I’m disappointed that that (the sword incident) even happened.”

In no way, she said, does it reduce her admiration for Trump.

“It doesn’t, because he’s doing a lot of things that are correct,” Bell said. “But he just needs to remember that there are things that are untouchable.

“You know? I can’t let you walk into my house and take my great-grandmothers’s dish because you know it’s there. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean it’s somebody’s to grab and you can just take what you want.

“I mean, the main point is, you can’t take something that isn’t yours and give it to somebody.”

At 18, her co-worker Taylor Robinson had yet to vote.

“I think if it’s in a presidential library, it should stay where it is,” she said. “If that’s where it was meant to be, then it shouldn’t be switched around.”

Bell said she felt bad for Arrington, a 30-year federal employee, who last week told the Kansas News Service that he had explained to the Trump Administration that the sword was not his to give.

“They asked for a sword,” Arrington told the news service, “and we said, ‘Well, we do have swords, but we can’t give them away because they’re museum artifacts.’”

Presidential libraries

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes it illegal to use artifacts given to presidential libraries as gifts. Arrington said he worked with administration officials to come up with an alternative gift. The president in September presented King Charles a replica of an Eisenhower sword from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Arrington, who became the Eisenhower library’s director just over one year ago, said he thought that the alternative had been deemed acceptable until he heard last week from a supervisor, whom he declined to identify, who told him that he could either resign or be fired.

“I was obviously shocked and saddened and heartbroken,“ Arrington said. “I have almost 30 years of government service. I’ve never had a bad mark against me.”

Arrington said that a supervisor told him that he was being asked to resign because he “could no longer be trusted with confidential information.” On Saturday, Arrington told the Kansas Reflector that the reason he was pressured to leave continued to remain “a mystery to me.”

The New York Times previously reported that three individuals with knowledge of Arrington’s situation said that the director may also have angered officials at the National Archives and Records Administration for sharing information with his staff about changes to longstanding plans for a new education center.

Trump voters disapprove

“It’s crap!” Tyson Beisel, who voted for Trump twice, said of the incident. “I mean the guy’s worked for how long, 30 years for the federal government? I mean, he did what he (the president) wanted, right? He took the time to come up with something else.

“It seems kind of ridiculous to me. . . .He took the time and effort to do that (come up with an alternative). Where’s the thanks for that?”

He, too, remains supportive of the president and his overall agenda “like with the border and stuff,” Beisel said.

“It’s just the day-to-day,” he said, which gives him pause, “like guys like this, people who are just going about doing their jobs. It’s just the little things. This is the kind of guy you said you’d take care of ... Is it all lip-service? It probably is.”

Angelina Porter, a lifelong resident who said she considers herself apolitical, was pushing her 1-year-old daughter, Lexie, down Buckeye Avenue.

“I’m totally on the side of the guy who lost his job,” she said. “If anyone else was told, ‘no,’” she said, “they would have to accept it whether they like it or not. Seem like he’s (Trump) is being a little power trippy.”

Age 82, Larry Schwartz is a huge Trump supporter. He spoke from the porch of his house, only blocks away from the presidential library. A former service station owner, his lawn is covered with more than 100 bicycles, neatly lined in rows, which he sells between his Trump flags for extra money.

“I’ve got my flags up for Mr. Trump, and I thank God for what he’s doing,” Schwartz said, “because he’s made a difference in America.”

As for being required to give up museum artifacts:

“I think it’s bull****,” Schwartz said. “It’s a museum. I really don’t like the idea of that. My wife doesn't like it either.“

Alysa Urvanek, 39, spoke from the driver’s seat of her car.

“I was shocked. I thought it was ridiculous,” she said of the director losing his job. “That (the sword) is not somebody else’s.”

Rod Boyd, 75, sat in the office of his business, Boyd’s Excavating Inc.

“I’m a Trump person. He straightens a lot of things out,“ he said. “But he’s almost like a dictator at times. It’s his way or no way ... I’m unhappy with ‘either you resign or you get fired.’ He’s out of line.”

Boyd, however, also allowed for the possibility that it was not Trump, personally, but rather one of his subordinates, who made the decision to pressure Arrington to resign.

“We may never know where (the pressure) came from,” Boyd said, later reinforcing, “I am a Trump believer. And my wife is furious at me for that, just because of his actions.

“But I said, ‘You know,the country’s going in a good way.’”

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