After eight years under US President Barack Obama, the Tennessee gun owner and Sunday night gospel DJ was praying for change.

Enter Donald Trump — the New York “blue-collar billionaire” who rode a wave of anti-immigration, pro-gun sentiment in America’s Deep South all the way to the White House.

“We have been enslaved by the Democrats for the last eight years and were having our rights stripped away from us by these socialists,” Mrs Tackett, a Born Again Christian, said.

“I think Donald will do what he says he’ll do. I think he will keep his promises. And I think he’s going to make America great again.”

The country music singer will fly to Washington, D.C. for the US President-elect’s inauguration on January 20.

She’ll join up to one million supporters and protesters whose fractured ranks reflect sharp divisions over the Republican’s shock defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll of 899 voters, conducted from January 5-9, shows a high proportion of Americans have major concerns about Trump’s presidency.

The former reality TV star had a job disapproval rating of 51 per cent with just a 37 per cent approval rating.

A new Pew Research Center poll, conducted from 4-9 January among 1502 respondents, reveals only 39 per cent approved of how Trump explained his policies and plans, compared with 55 per cent who disapproved.

The Pew ratings have changed little since December.

But in Trump heartland, the bad ratings don't bother the billionaire's fans.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of Trump supporters,” said Patricia Todd, an openly gay Democratic

Alabama state representative, “and they really did just want to burn the house down.”

“It wouldn’t have necessarily have been a pro-Trump vote. It was an anti-establishment vote.”

TRUE BELIEVERS

For Mrs Tackett, Trump is a political outsider with entrepreneurial flair who will make her hometown, Fayetteville, great again.

The “bedroom community” (“people sleep here but leave to work”), 1.5 hours south of Nashville, is still reeling from the forthcoming closure of a Goodman Manufacturing plant that employs up to 2000 workers.

In her county, Trump received 10,375 votes to Clinton’s 2550.

“My family was all born and raised Democrat. But everything that God gave us to live by, the Democrats were against. We don’t believe in abortion. We don’t believe in big government.

“We need jobs and I believe Trump will bring them back,” Mrs Tackett said after showing me around her Trumpesque home.

Chintzy chandeliers, brass-burnished mirrors and glass cabinets brimming with trinkets adorn the three-storey property — jarringly out of step with the rest of the downtrodden area.

“Oh, my house is so gaudy. Donald Trump would just love it,” she laughed.

Trump’s 2011 tome, Time to Get Tough: Make America Great Again!, takes pride of place on her coffee table.

On her laptop flashes a photo of the political maverick greeting her after the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016.

Against the wall, a life-size cutout of Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence. She keeps a gun in her handbag, three in her car, and a stockpile in the basement.

Known around town as “Mary T”, the Republican delegate helped secure Trump’s nomination.

Sipping coffee at her kitchen table, Mrs Tackett told me the real estate mogul’s tough stance on immigration — and forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall — clinched her vote.

She defiantly shrugs off a CNN report that Trump’s transition team now expects Congress to fund the wall.

“Mexico will pay for the wall. Our trade agreements with them, they’ve been sending everything here and we’ve been getting nothing and so they will pay for that wall,” she insisted.

THE WORD ACCORDING TO TRUMP

Judy Ashby, who campaigned for Trump in Pensacola, Florida and Cincinnati, Ohio with Mrs Tackett, believes he was sent by God to stop Clinton from continuing Obama’s unpatriotic “destruction” of America.

To her, Clinton’s proposed gun ownership reforms and support for women’s health service Planned Parenthood were unbearable.

“Trump was saying exactly what the American people were feeling,” the 64-year- old grandmother of 10 says.

“When he started speaking, I felt like, oh my gosh he is saying what I feel.

“He has the position, the power and the money to get our feelings across … this is the first president that I can truly say I am for him all the way.

“Right now, you can’t trust the government. You can’t trust the media. I’m just praying he is going to be, not our saviour, but he is what I believe God is using to bring this country back to where it needs to be.”

For William “Bill” Wendt, Mrs Tackett’s fiance, Trump’s unvarnished directness proves he can be trusted.

The couple met at a Tea Party event about six years ago.

“He (Trump) is so direct and plain-spoken. You want your politicians, the people you elect, to be truthful,” the Scoutmaster said.

“You’d like them to say what’s on their mind without being too conscious.

“They’re human beings. We want them to be spontaneous and to be real. Donald Trump — he is real.”

The chemical engineer believes American businesses have been stifled by a “heavy burden of environmental law written by bureaucrats” and welcomes proposals by the Trump administration to roll back regulations.

Trump has alarmed environmental advocates by calling climate change a hoax perpetuated by China and controversially tapping Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pruitt has sued the EPA multiple times.

Asked what she didn’t like about Clinton, Mrs Tackett didn’t hold back.

“I do not like Hill-uh- ree,” she drawls. “I did not like anything she stood for. I think Hillary is a crook, a liar. She doesn’t think of anybody but herself. She is a self-centred person.

“She wanted the power and she couldn’t care less about this country. We could all go to hell in a hand basket as far as she’s concerned.”

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

Over the border in northeast Alabama, about 50kms south of Fayetteville, Clinton supporters gather at a Democratic Women’s luncheon at the Huntsville Country Club.

Minutes before delivering the keynote speech, Alabama state representative Patricia Todd tells me Trump’s triumph was a punch in the guts for women and the LGBTQI community.

Trump’s running mate, Indiana Governor Pence, is staunchly anti-gay.

He signed his state’s anti-LGBTQI “religious liberty” law in 2015, reportedly supported gay conversion therapy, and claimed marriage equality would lead to “societal collapse”.

“It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in my history in America,” Alabama’s first openly

gay elected official said.

“It’s the first time we’ve had a president that terrifies us about what he might do or tweet.

Every time I talk to a Trump supporter, they make excuses for why he is doing what he’s doing.

“He’s not burning the house down, he’s bringing in his cronies to take Cabinet positions who know nothing about what it’s like to live in poverty or on an average income.”

Rich, white males dominate Trump’s top cabinet posts — a point not lost on African-American Democrat, Eleanor Burks, who attended the luncheon.

During his election campaign, she says, the Republican nominee “expressed the sentiments of the silent” with his divisive rhetoric on immigration and black rights.

“It’s what we saw in the civil rights movement. Trump was talking the talk that (some white) people were afraid to and he aroused those feelings that have long been hidden,” said Mrs Burks, who retired last year after a 30-year teaching career.

“With Trump, he seems to be not just anti-black, but anti-other. Anyone with a different skin colour — Mexicans, Muslims — any minority who doesn’t fit into the status quo … but I would say to him, you can’t suppress one group of people without suppressing us all.”

Trump has repeatedly rejected racism charges, and denounced the Ku Klux Klan’s endorsement of him.

THAT OLD-TIME AMERICA

Over in Paint Rock Valley, a rural township about 30 minutes’ drive from Huntsville, Jerry and Joyce Carter blame Obama, not Trump, for the growing race divide.

“Obama has encouraged division with the races. When we grew up it was not like that,” Mrs Carter, 74, says.

“I mean before the laws of integration, there were separate rest rooms but when we were brought up, we never disrespected any, you know.

“We were Christians and even shared churches sometimes. The division is now, it wasn’t then.”

The Carters have been married for 58 years and have four children, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

They live on an enormous, fenceless property flanked by steep mountains and a meandering river.

Although they voted for Trump, they don’t consider themselves Republicans.

They say they were won over by Trump’s staggering wealth (“It shows he is a worker”) and his vows to rebuild the military, ease the economic deficit and create jobs.

Alabama’s 5.9 per cent unemployment rate is well above the US average of around 4.7 per cent, according to the latest US Bureau of Labor statistics.

“Making America great again means getting us to a place where we’re not trillions in debt and not owned by other countries that we borrow money from,” Mr Carter, 77, said.

“Since World War II, we have been the military leaders of the world and kept the peace.

We need to rebuild the military.

“The only way to prevent a war is to be the biggest, strongest guy on the block.”

He added: “Trump is a smart man, he can do good. He’s a little bit egotistical but then again … we’re not electing a primary school teacher or a Mr Nice Guy.

“We’re electing a leader and we haven’t had a leader in eight years.”

WOMEN IN THEIR PLACE

Back in Huntsville, 61-year- old motor mechanic Randy Edwards also backs Trump but, like the Carters, doesn’t identify as Republican.

He voted for former US President Bill Clinton in 1990s, but a vote for his wife, Hillary, was out of the question.

“I don’t want a woman to be over a man. I would never vote for a woman to lead the country,” the grandfather of two tells me.

He has high hopes for Trump, saying: “Hillary was going to let hundreds of thousands of immigrants and Muslims and Mexicans into the country. I’m not against them as long as they come in the right way.

“People come into this country and we start feeding them straight away and they’re taking our jobs. I hope Trump is a good president. He’s a businessman.

“He didn’t get where is he at by doing nothing. Maybe he can get this country out of deficit.”

While Casey Warner, 23, an international business student at Alabama A & M University, voted for Clinton, he is also open to Trump running America like a business.

“I’ve never liked Trump, for years. Everything he says is not fair to me and nothing makes sense. Everything he says he goes back on. But I will give him a chance and I will see what he can do because maybe America does need to be run like a business for once,” the Indiana native says.

But 35-year- old Susan Smith, a traditional Republican voter, is less hopeful.

The mother-of-three backed Ohio Governor, John Kasich, for the nomination. She was troubled when Trump came out on top.

“With Trump, I just did not like his mannerisms and the way he put others down to build himself up.

“His behaviour is just bullying and it’s not OK and I don’t want my children to see that kind of example in a leader,” she says as she makes her way to EarlyWorks Children’s History Museum in downtown Huntsville with her two-year-old son, Nathan.

“It’s a reality TV culture and people felt like Donald Trump was offering something different. He is a just a fireball.”

KEEPING THE FAITH

Samuel H Givhan, a father of six and Chairman of the Madison County Republican Executive Committee, is an ultraconservative Republican.

He backed Marco Rubio for the nomination but now stands behind Trump.

“If you look at some of the things a person could be attacked for in the Republican primary, he had a long list of things that could have done in.

“For instance, my dad and his brother were in the military. My dad fought in Vietnam, but my uncle got out of action before the Vietnam era so he was only in the reserve,” he said in a conference room at Wilmer & Lee law firm in Huntsville, where he works as a lawyer.

“My dad was incensed about the comments Trump made about Senator McCain. My uncle thought it was wonderful.

“So I thought here we are, brothers, both military men and they had exact opposite views of a situation. I thought when Trump attacked McCain, he was done.

“In retrospect I sometimes wonder if anybody else could have pulled off what he did. It was a very historic thing and it will be interesting to see how the next four years go.”

Trump, 70, has promised “tremendous” reforms, but has never fully articulated what they will involve. He brands his predecessor’s policies, like Obamacare, “disastrous”, yet hasn’t offered clear alternatives.

It remains to be seen how he will make Mexico pay for the wall, stop Islamic State, or provide veterans with the easy access to medical care he says they deserve.

Back in Tennessee, Mrs Tackett isn’t worried about Trump’s lack of detail.

“He’s gonna to put people back to work,” she said.

“He’s gonna to make us like America used to be. When I met him and talked with him, I was more than ever convinced he was what we needed to make America great again.”