Illinois paper straw manufacturer Gaetano “Guy” Spinelli, the Trump voter whose business is in a death spiral with orders down 85 percent since last year after his customers ghosted for reasons unclear following the convicted felon president’s declaration of jihad against them, tells WBEZ he’s going to be out of business before the end of year if things don’t turn around soon, somehow.

Apparently Spinelli has quickened his pace of sending unanswered correspondence to the White House as last month he told the Chicago Tribune the number was at five letters and a dozen emails with the number now at 10 letters and 25 emails. “I’m not a billionaire like him,” Spinelli said. “Two million dollars,” the amount of his life savings that he invested in launching Boss Straw “is a lot of money for me. Us little guys, who he claims he’s for – he should be proud of us.”

Standing inside his factory now with four fewer than the nine employees he began the year with, 14 million unsold paper straws, and 15 percent of the previous year’s sales volume, Spinelli said “We got to get China out of this marketplace because they’re ruining the world. I don’t want anything from China. They’re the worst thieves in the world,” and that he supports Trump “getting illegal immigrants out of the country. The things he has done are exactly what he campaigned on.”

Except the part about paper straws. “What do you think that does to a paper straw company? It cripples us because the president said it,” Spinelli lamented. “If it keeps up the way it is, he will drive me out of business by the end of this year. It would be the end of the story.” Stick around for if and when National Zero can report that Spinelli and Boss Straw’s story does indeed truly well end.