I am certainly not a Trump fan. I think he is a terrible President. That said, I really want to understand him and I certainly have not been able to do so.
I have a new theory. I am hoping others here will comment and help me understand the man.
My main observations.
Trump is a liar, a braggart, and a bully. He has been that way all his adult life.
Trumps goals are clear and he believes they are beneficial to the country.
Trump supporters understand this and are fine with it.
Discussion.
First, please accept that calling Trump a liar is clearly true and not an insult. Same with the braggart and the bully. It is his way and crucially he is not deceptive about it. That is, he lies a lot and everyone knows it. It is as much part of him as his hair or his family history. Once accepted, it is not a character flaw as much as a peculiar character trait.
The latest part of this effort is the surprising (to me) consistency of support for Trump among his supporters. They voted for the man and are apparently just fine with him changing his positions on many crucial parts of his campaign.
I think this is key to understanding the man. His supporters have always seen something the rest of us haven’t been able to see or understand.
Trump isn’t about doing what he promised. He is about disruptive change. He throws out a huge number of unlikely in the extreme ideas that are very disruptive. He may or may not believe he can accomplish them-it doesn’t matter because he can’t whether or not he believes he can. And I think his supporters understand that and that is exactly what they want. He has their support because in fact he is doing exactly what they think the Government needs.
I can think of a couple of other examples of such change. When John Kennedy called on the US to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the decade, one would be justified in calling him a liar. It was literally impossible to do that at the time and the technology and techniques that would be necessary had not yet been invented. But everyone understood what was being said and no-one called the President a liar. A more recent example is Elon Musk’s stated goal of putting a million people on Mars-this from a man and a company that has never put a man in low earth orbit and probably could not fund one percent of the cost of such an effort. No one calls him a liar-though braggart might be appropriate.
So, is Trump about his promises or about his change? Could this be the key to understanding his surprising success? Have Trump supporters always seen the change and ignored the promises (or discounted their importance in regard to supporting the man) while his opponents have focused on the promises and feared the change?
Or has everyone else already figured all this out and I am just now catching up?
Trump is about shameless profiteering wrapped up in the politics of division and fear. He was a, ‘BURN DOWN THE HOUSE!’, candidate. The details matter not at all to those who elected him. Make mayhem, piss everybody off, upset the Applecart, screw the protocols, it’s a new world!
My current theory is that the he’s continuing to campaign, all the while raising heaps of money, not just because his ego demands the adoration. I suspect he’s found a way around campaign finance laws. Where after lengthy court battles, it’s decided the language was less than clear, he wins, and all that money goes into his pockets/businesses.
So where I feared he’d rob the country’s treasure, it appears he’s intent on soaking the rubes of every penny. All the while decidedly failing to deliver on the promises he continues to brag on to adoring crowds.
Trump is a narcissistic carnival barker and an intellectually challenged con-man. His objectives are to aggrandize and enrich himself and he’ll lie, cheat and steal in order to accomplish that goal. His minions are co-conspirators and deplorables. His supporters are rubes.
Just this morning I was thinking along the lines of whether Americans ought to admit that we are a lot less than we like to think of ourselves.
While theoretically I can imagine a political/fiscal/social conservative, I have a hard time seeing that reflected in today’s Republicans. It is hard to come up with an explanation for their policies that works better than an intention to increase the wealth of the wealthiest. And they get voters to support that by appeals to their ignorance, fears, and prejudices. (I’m sure many Repubs would disagree with my characterization.)
Dems/liberals like to perceive a progressive arc towards increased liberalism across the board. Which is certainly true over the span of many decades/centuries. But when fucking liberals won’t even go out to vote, either there are fewer of them, or the strength of their convictions is awfully weak.
A lot of voters (a majority?) of both parties are pretty damned ignorant, and biased. Trump benefits from the apparent fact that there are either more ignorant Repub voters than Dems, or at least the ignorant Repubs are more willing to turn out in key states.
Trump is a self-promoter, who has found a strategy that will appeal to the electorate, while his self interest is consistent enough with other wealthy/powerful individuals/entities that they will support him. Sure, one can speculate forever, and come up with more and more complicated explanations, but this one is simple and IMO consistent with the evidence.
Hell, no! He set America a challenge, to which it rose magnificently.
In another thread I called Trump an honest liar - he knows he’s a liar, we know he’s a liar, and he knows we know. (And we know that he knows that… (contd p. 97)) So he’s taken advantage of that. Compare his plain-speaking lies with Clinton’s deceptive obliqueness: for example, Clinton talked about ‘gun safety’ when she meant ‘gun control’. That’s not the whole story, of course, only one element.
I have no idea why he is so popular. Granted he isn’t popular in a lot of ways (his approval ratings are the worst in 70+ years for a president in their first 100 days) but he got 63 million votes.
I’d like to learn more about his appeal and why his voters support him. I don’t mean that in a snarky way. And yeah, I know people will say ‘listen to his voters’ but there are 2 problems with that. For one, people only admit their socially acceptable motivations and being honest, Trump appealed to a lot of socially unpopular motivations in people (misogyny, tribalism, the desire for a brutish alpha male, etc). For another, in my experience a lot of Trump supporters aren’t really that factually accurate in their beliefs about politics and many seem to lack self awareness. So I don’t think that is a good group to offer honest, well thought out reflections and self descriptions about their motives.
I don’t think you’ll find the answer on this board, we lean in one direction. Reddits like r/the_donald are just mindless cheerleading so you won’t get anywhere there either.
Most of your observations are correct, as far as they go. You need to go a bit further to gain the insight that you want.
Suggested questions to explore:
why do Trump supporters scream “Hillary is a LIAR!!” , but PRAISE Trump for lying? Hint: the answer is NOT that they are hypocrites.
are peoples perceptions shaped and/or distorted by their personal experiences?
I think that the key to understanding Trump and the phenomenon of his Presidency, is to look dispassionately at recent history, specifically the time period from about 1970 to the present. That takes in the bulk of the people who voted in this election.
Between the actual events of those years , and the decision to propagandize the events by various political groups, we reached the point now, where there is very little faith in any of our various governments, and that is ironically being encouraged by at least half of the leading politicians of the day. On top of that, the ACTUAL history of those days has been rewritten by today’s leaders, and no longer resembles what actually happened.
Trump came along and took all that at face value, and said whatever it was that people appeared to want to hear. Since he at least APPEARS to be willing, if not eager, to believe almost any conspiracy theory at all that might profit him, he has no trouble giving his followers the SENSE that he is sincere in his INTENTIONS.
Just as people who are desperate to find love will forgive incredible abuses from someone who says they will give it to them, Trumps followers are actually GLAD that he lies and makes unsupportable bombastic statements, because they see all of what HE does, as "tweaking the nose of the evil giants of the world."
[By the way, your Kennedy simile is erroneous. Kennedy did NOT PROMISE to land a man on the moon. He set that forth as a goal for the nation to strive for. VERY big difference.]
First, as far as I can tell, there are a bunch of different type Trump supporters.
#1. There are those who support him because he wasn’t Clinton or a Dem*. #2. There are those who support him because Trump talked about their problems in a way Clinton did not. #3. There are those who voted for him because Trump was outspoken and not afraid to say controversial shit. #4. There are those who voted for him because he isn’t part of the normal Washington crew.
I am sure there are more reasons why people voted for him.
For #1, I know quite a few people who voted for Trump because they knew what programs Clinton would pursue and Trump, while not being the best choice, was better than what Clinton offered. These folks often thought that Trump wouldn’t get a lot done and, in their minds, Trump doing nothing is better than Clinton being effective.
#2. Clinton and the Dems basically ignored a huge chunk of the voting population. Or, at least, the people in that group felt ignored. This group would be suburbs and rural folks who don’t fall into a special group. Trump told them that their problems mattered.
#3. Trump said outrageous shit and didn’t care. The standard politician these days says whatever the polls tell them to say. Trump came across as honest about goals in a way that most politicians don’t, even though everyone knew Trump was full of shit on the actual policy specifics.
#4. A lot of people are sick of politicians as they see the politicians as people who kiss the voters ass every 4 years by promising all sorts of things to get votes then ignore the people who voted them into office the rest of the time.
Add in a dash of people being sick of told that they are deplorable and you get President Trump.
Slee
*Any mainstream D besides Clinton would have killed Trump
I think Trump’s goals were clear; he wanted to be President. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he also thought that would be beneficial to the country. That doesn’t mean it’s true, but it’s possible he believes it.
The mystery to me is not why Trump did what he did; he acted in pursuit of his goal. The mystery is why anyone else thought it would be a good idea for Trump to be President. Or even to vote for Trump if they were ignoring the possible consequences of doing that.
Beyond that, the people who are highly in favor of Trump today are the ones who’re getting their news about Trump from Trump. If you read his tweets they’re a continuous drumbeat of all the wonderful stuff he’s already done. And of all the ways that everybody else in the world, be that Kim or Congress, is trying at every turn to stymie Trump. And yet, tomorrow he will announce yet another great victory over the people trying to slow him down.
In the Trump 50% approval thread there were cites to legit opinion polls that something like 80% of Trump voters believe he’s already Made America Great Again. In less than 100 days he’s done it all. That’s the power of single-minded pure propaganda when applied to a gullible audience.
It’s kinda like the Nigerian 419 scam. The very people who will fall for the misspellings and funky English are exactly the ones who’ll keep sending good money after bad as they’re pulled more deeply into the con.
Trump discovered there was a bunch of Americans who desperately wanted to believe in a vigilante avenger. So he’s playing one. And that audience is eating it up. Mostly because they’re affirmatively avoiding listening to any version of the news except the BS propaganda the vigilante avenger is putting out of, by, and for himself and his aggrandizement.
Trump has a lot of appeal to authoritarians, who have highly compartmentalized minds and are comfortable with double standards. The lies and 180s don’t bother them, especially as long as Trump humiliates their enemies and makes them feel part of a powerful social movement. These are the folks who supported Nixon and GWB to the bitter end.
As for Trump himself, he’s taken both sides of most every issue, or has been vague enough you can read anything you like into it. You’ll struggle to construct a consistent ideology if you take his words at face value. So far he seems like the usual slash and burn Tea Party Republican, except with even more graft.
I think he mobilized the idiot vote. And I’m being serious.
As deplorable as Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars etc are, those media are hugely popular. And on top of that there are countless conspiracy sites, channels and talk radio that are not necessarily conservative, but have the same cynical views of government and belief that gut feeling trumps facts.
(Whether their audience starts out ignorant, or becomes that way from watching this stuff, doesn’t matter to my point.)
Trump got all those voters. He didn’t just pay lip service to them (as previous GOP candidates have). He believed in those conspiracies, and understood the world in the simplistic terms that they understand it. And those various slogans – “Lyin’ Ted”, “Crooked Hillary Clinton”, “Failing New York Times” etc – in terms of manipulating the idiot crowd, it’s genius. It’s exactly what fox news does.
OMG a politician who lies. I have news for you, they all do, including Saint Obama who will soon go to Wall Street and tell them what ever lies they want to hear and then accept their 400K check.
First, I agree that my Kennedy simile is erroneous. But I was trying to make a point. Kennedy issued a challenge and proposed a project that technically, at the time, he and everyone else knew was impossible. He himself famously described engines that used “materials that haven’t been invented yet”. However, I certainly agree that he was sure (and had been assured) that the technology could be developed if the will could be harnessed. He wasn’t misleading anyone-he was challenging the entire country to great things and the country achieved them.
I hate to debase the above story by comparing it to Trump’s wall, but there are similarities. No-one doubts the wall can be built technically but there are current impossibilities-a solid wall built in the middle of the Rio Grande river where the border currently runs is not possible, but that is a solvable problem. Most importantly to my thesis, the wall, while important to his supporters as a physical object represents an idea that remains irrespective of the physical wall. So in that sense the wall isn’t misleading his supporters, they know better. It IS misleading to his detractors, we don’t understand the man and how he acts.
Trump lies about the wall, I have always assumed his “Mexico will pay for it” was a deliberate out for the eventuality he might actually have to deliver on this promise. He made this promise early in his campaign before he realized he could lie and promise without bothering to give himself an out. His supporters would believe in him (note, not believe him-that is different) regardless of his outlandish promises.
I agree that his supporters criticize Clinton for lying while at the same time excusing Trump for lying. I theorize that the reason is they believe Clinton (or anyone they disagree with) is lying to deceive the listener while Trump is lying to make a point about what he believes.
Well, given that he hasn’t spoken yet, it is premature to conclude he will lie to them. He doesn’t have to tell them the truth or lie, just speak platitudes and feel-good comments. The check will clear no matter. So, while he may lie, there is no reason to. And given the publicity lying is getting in the country right now, he has an incentive to avoid it.
Personally I wish he wasn’t taking the money. At the same time if someone offered me $400K for an afternoon’s easy work, it would be hard to turn down.
What I don’t get is why these deals keep happening. I am sure everyone remembers Ronald Reagan going to Japan right after he left office and accepting $5 million for a single speech to an audience where not everyone present even understood the language he used. The host explicitly said it was in gratitude for actions Reagan had taken while President. Such things have been going on for a long time.
You would think the business world would come up with better ways to say thank you.
Agreed. In fact I will go further and say that everyone, politician or not, lies.
I theorize that there are perceived differences among liars.
Some lie to deceive and some lie to make a point.
Some lie so much and so baldly that one can’t believe anything they say.
Others only lie to avoid some penalty (like losing votes or getting arrested), and try to tell the truth whenever they can.
Out of curiosity, can you identify one person or one profession where lying doesn’t exist?