Midwestern voters who backed Donald Trump are confident he can deliver on key campaign promises. But if he doesn’t, they’ll blame Congress more than the businessman who defied the odds to capture the White House.

If a focus group of 12 Trump voters from Cleveland is a guide, the New York “outsider” can expect the benefits of a honeymoon and Teflon armor reserved for an improbable leader with no experience governing or negotiating on behalf of the United States around the world.

“He’s working bipartisan,” Melinda, a 51-year-old homemaker who last voted for a Democrat for president in 1996, said Tuesday. “He’s working in the middle.”

Sky-high hopes for Trump and enthusiasm about his approach to Washington, almost in spite of what he says or does, marked a two-hour conversation moderated by pollster Peter Hart of Democratic firm Hart Research, as part of research for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The center sponsored a series of focus group discussions during the 2016 presidential race, including the final post-election conversation Tuesday with six men and six women in swing-state Ohio, ages 27 to 62, all of them white. The Buckeye State was among Midwestern and Rust Belt territory Trump secured to win 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232.

Michael, a 54-year-old mechanical engineer who considers himself a strong Republican, joined with other Trump enthusiasts from Cleveland, including several who had previously voted for President Obama, to predict that Trump’s business acumen will blast through gridlock and scuttle partisan maneuvering, which the electorate in polls associates with garden-variety Washington politicians.

Among descriptions of the president-elect offered by the group: “smart businessman,” “powerful,” “intense,” “our future,” “a leader,” “steadfast,” and “great.”

Asked to describe why they voted for Trump, rather than for Clinton (described by several participants as a “liar,” and “corrupt”), they offered these phrases: “fire,” “hope,” “change,” “he gets it,” “excited,” “kill health care,” and “lesser of two evils.”

Trump’s nomination of corporate leaders to steer the State Department, Treasury, Commerce, Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as his picks from Congress to round out his Cabinet, the Cleveland group suggested, reinforced their confidence that he is assembling a team that can deliver promised changes.

“He’s smart enough to delegate to people who will get things done,” Michael said. “And he needs someone who knows the games they play [in Congress] to get things done.”

The group conceded they would be disappointed if, in two years, Trump failed to deliver on their policy wish lists. But they expressed few reservations about the incoming president, and instead threw darts at the news media and Trump’s detractors in Congress.

Members of the group, for instance, expressed misgivings about House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, calling him “untrustworthy,” a “weasel,” a politician who “had his own agenda” and a member of the GOP who initially opposed Trump. One man described Ryan as “like a typical conservative; he didn’t want an outsider.”

Those observations may become more politically important in 2017. Ryan wants to push his ambitious, conservative agenda through the House, but to many voters, he will first need Trump’s blessing.

Trump’s Cleveland backers placed premiums on the president-elect’s pledges to create jobs and rev the economy, repeal the Affordable Care Act (without knowing what takes its place), and enforce immigration laws. Whether or not Trump’s promised wall at the border with Mexico ever gets built seemed of little consequence to the group, which debated -- without reaching consensus -- whether or how to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants living and working in the country, many of them for decades.

“I think they should find them and give them an opportunity to become legal,” said Marianne, the 62-year-old owner of a small business who described herself as politically independent. She voted for Obama in 2008.

The group also wanted to see Trump shrink the federal deficit and debt, and reduce federal spending. That ambition could run counter to some of Trump’s proposals, such as a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure, his proposed tax cuts, increased spending on defense, and his campaign vow to leave the entitlement side of the federal ledger – Social Security and Medicare – unchanged.

The Trump voters said they are less interested in whether the 45th president makes good on his call for tax relief for families than whether he cuts federal taxes on corporations, which the group, echoing the man they helped elect, said would spur U.S. companies to return their operations to the United States, encourage new hiring, and pump up federal revenues.

Asked which was more important to them – lowering corporate taxes or lowering “the deficit” -- eight of the 12 participants said cutting the deficit was a priority. The deficit was 3.2 percent of GDP in fiscal 2016, but the accumulated federal debt amounted to $19.6 trillion at the close of fiscal 2016 in October.

Reacting to a variety of dust-ups in the news during Trump’s transition, the Cleveland group said they remained distrustful of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but were not convinced that Russia was behind cyber breaches in the United States in an effort to put Trump in the White House. Their advice to the incoming president: “tread lightly.”

“We need to take things slow,” said William, a 50-year-old service representative. “We don’t need a plastic reset button or anything.”

The Cleveland group was unconcerned that Trump has not clarified how he plans to untangle his extensive business interests from his public interests as president, many of which could create potential conflicts. “He already has his wealth,” said a woman who believed Trump has no reason to seek to benefit himself.

The group appeared unfamiliar with what a blind trust would entail, and Hart took time to summarize how it might impact Trump if he decided to go that route (which he has resisted).

There were two Trump controversies that captured the group’s attention, however. One is his persistent use of Twitter to communicate, and the other was his expressed disinterest in reviewing the Presidential Daily Briefing, created by U.S. intelligence agencies for the commander-in-chief and available to the president-elect to take stock of world conditions and events. Trump’s transition team said Wednesday he currently receives the information three days a week.

Eight of the dozen participants said Trump should become a student of the briefings because of his “inexperience.” Several of the Trump voters said he “needs to make decisions with information,” while others said the president would always get the advice of his national security team before making decisions, and some said he could review the information in writing, if necessary.

Trump’s Twitter habits were well known to the Cleveland group. Some were aware in detail about his comments regarding claims of cost overruns for a new Air Force One and for the F-35 fighter jet. But in general, they found his middle-of-the-night messaging on Twitter to be “juvenile,” “unpresidential,” and disruptive enough to “detract” from his intended communications. One bit of advice to Trump: get a “social media manager” in the White House, and keep his fingers off his smartphone.

“I think he needs to stay off Twitter,” Melinda said. “It seems juvenile. Stay above it.”