Some months ago, I was writing an essay for The Arena about Donald Trump. I got about two-thirds of the way through and thought, “Does anyone want to read yet another article about Donald Trump?” The answer I gave myself was “No.” So I deleted the file and wrote something else.
I still basically feel that way, yet I am going to write an essay about how we really don’t need so many essays about Donald Trump. The gist of the deleted piece was how anti-Trump folks fail to understand, or even attempt to understand, pro-Trump folks. Yet, since I was giving a partial defense of Trump supporters, I felt I needed to make it clear that I am not one of them. I therefore repeated the litany of all the problems with Trump. But does anyone really need to read such a list anymore? No one on either side–and I suppose very few are in the middle on this topic–will be convinced. Still, since this essay will also provide such a partial defense of Trump supporters and criticisms of anti-Trump writers, I suppose I should make myself clear.
Let’s just put it succinctly. I think Donald Trump is an ignorant, illiterate demagogue who is intellectually and morally unfit to be president. Again, I could list reasons for this view, but I think we all know what those reasons are, and no one will be convinced one way or the other anyhow.
This is partially my point. By now the marginal return on Trump-based opinion pieces had got to be approaching zero. Either you are for him or against him. Ain’t no one changing their minds now. While I do not quite share the view that Trump is an existential threat to democracy (in part because I think he lacks the competence for such a feat), I do think he is a significantly corrupting force. I agree, then, that we can’t just remain silent. A periodic reminder of Trump’s deleterious influence on American democracy is necessary.
But must we have the constant drumbeat? Let’s ponder the motivation behind anti-Trump writing (realizing here that I am painting with a broad brush, therefore being somewhat unfair). You aren’t telling anti-Trump people anything they don’t already know. You aren’t persuading pro-Trump people, who likely aren’t reading you anyway. And we’ve established that there aren’t really any fence sitters. So who is the audience?
It seems to me that a lot of anti-Trump writing represents anti-Trump folks posturing for their crowd. I think we all know that being against Trump is a kind of status marker in many circles. Put it this way: no one at this year’s Academy Awards is going to praise Donald Trump. Virtually no one is missing out on an academic job because they oppose Trump. In other words, being anti-Trump is a signal that you aren’t one of…blech!…them. You know, those irredeemable deplorables.
Much has been made of a recent survey show a deep gulf between American elites and the general population. And we know that Biden and Trump draw from very different socio-economic demographics. The typical Biden supporter (close, if not quite the same, as typical anti-Trumper) is a relatively wealthy (upper-middle to upper class), well-educated (college educated, probably with an advanced degree), white person. A lot of anti-Trump commentary is elites telling each other how awesome it is to be smarter and morally better than the peasants. If your commentary isn’t really going to persuade anyone, I conclude that your motivations are largely performative.
There is more than a little bit of self-righteousness to anti-Trump punditry. If we could harness self-righteousness for energy, we could power a small city with some commentators. It’d be nice if there was some effort displayed toward understanding the Trump-phenomenon in a serious, non-condescending way (I think Tim Carney did an excellent job). Instead, it’s “Here’s another story about how stupid Trump is” or worse “Here’s yet another dumb thing a Trump supporter said.” How much am I going to gain by the 1,000th piece about an obnoxious Trump fan? Yes, some are obnoxious. Yes, Trump is bad. Find something insightful or original to say about it.
It’d also help if some anti-Trump opinion wasn’t so transparently phony. Again, I am not sure Trump represents an existential threat to the regime, although I am convincible on that. I do agree that he’s a horrible cancer on our body politic. But if I thought he really was an existential threat, as almost all Democrats think, I think I would act differently than they do.
Democrats suffer from the “boy who cried wolf” disease. They have made so many bad arguments against Trump that the good, valid ones are easy for Trump supporters to dismiss. Yes, the Russia hoax really was a hoax. And at least some top Democrats knew it. Rep. Adam Schiff, possibly the next senator from California, outright lied when he said he’d seen the documents linking Trump and his campaign to the Russians. We know it was a lie because the Mueller investigation showed there were no such documents. In a McCarthyite moment, Schiff just made it up. But it was anti-Trump, so I guess that’s ok.
I think Trump’s post-2020 election behavior (election denial, January 6) deserved his impeachment and conviction. Shame on those Republicans who voted otherwise. But if Democrats really thought he represented such a threat to democracy, why did they dawdle almost two weeks before having a vote in the House? It should have been the next day. And then why did Chuck Schumer wait until after Biden’s inauguration to have the Senate trial, knowing it gave Republicans in the Senate a credible if ultimately unconvincing out (Trump was already out of office)? Trump’s assault on democracy was damnable! A threat to our very democracy! We’ll take a stand on that…right after this huge COVID spending bill! Saving democracy is important, but not quite as important as spending a bunch of money.
And why then did Democrats spend tens of millions of dollars supporting pro-Trump Republicans in Republican primaries in 2022? Even against Republicans who did courageously support Trump’s impeachment. If Trump is truly a threat to democracy, why would you promote his minions? We know why. Because they were easier to beat in the general election. And it worked. Democrats minimized Republican gains in the midterm election, turning a Red wave into a Red trickle. But that represents more than your average measure of political cynicism. What kind of party supports candidates who by their own rhetoric represent a dire threat to the republic just to advance their own immediate political interests? Either one that is willing to play Russian roulette with democracy or one that doesn’t really believe “Trump is a threat to democracy.” For what it’s worth, I think it is the former, not the latter. Deeply, damnably cynical.
An honest anti-Trump movement would acknowledge that other than the case of federal documents found at Mar-a-Lago, the legal cases against Trump are very weak and frankly do smack of politization of the law. The cases out of New York and Georgia seem especially weak (even before the potential prosecutorial malfeasance in Georgia came to light). Yet it is just these cases that predictably lifted Trump in the polls amongst Republicans, who rallied around Trump as they, not implausibly, saw powerful elites unjustly using the law for political purposes. Trump, sinking in polls even amongst Republicans after the GOP’s 2022 midterm setback, found his support solidified. You might say those prosecutions saved Trump’s candidacy. Almost like it was intended that way. Like in 2022, promote the threat to democracy hoping you can beat it in the general election. Again, cynicism in extremis.
And then people wonder why pro-Trump people struggle to take anti-Trump folks seriously. If anti-Trump pundits were REALLY anti-Trump, they’d call Democrats out for all of this hypocrisy and cynicism. But they almost never do. Nor do they point out, for the sake of fairness, Joe Biden’s own obvious flaws. He’s a serial liar and fabulist. It really does seem more likely than not that he worked with his son to peddle access to himself for large sums of money. His racial demagoguery is despicable. He said Mitt Romney (Mitt Romney!) wanted to put black people back in chains. He said black people who didn’t vote for him aren’t “really black.” He described the most benign electoral reforms in Georgia as worse than Jim Crow. This was a willful peddling of an obvious untruth based in offensive historical ignorance. And what of the election changes? After the 2022 election, the first after the “Jim Crow” reforms, a University of Georgia study couldn’t find a single dissatisfied African-American voter in the state. That’s some pretty ineffectual racial segregation. Of course, anyone who was able to read or was not a mindless partisan knew this from the beginning. So, yes, Joe Biden is more than willing to spread falsehoods aimed at stoking racial animosity for his own electoral gain. I’d say that’s bad. And pretty disqualifying. This is to say nothing of the now plain fact that Joe Biden is not physically or mentally up to being president.
If anti-Trump forces were really dedicated to defeating Trump they’d be shouting from the rooftops for the Democrats to dump Biden for a more electable candidate, which outside of the true crazies is almost any Democrat against the deeply unpopular Trump. Dean Phillips is a good example. But nary a word from the anti-Trumpers on that account. They line up behind Biden or remain silent despite the fact that Biden is the only quasi-realistic Democratic nominee Trump could possibly beat.
I find myself in the position of most Americans, namely finding neither Trump nor Biden qualified for office, albeit for different reasons. And to be clear, whatever else Joe Biden is, he is not a cancer on the American republic.
I fit some of the demographics of the typical anti-Trump voter (which is fine, because I have never voted for Trump and have no intention of ever doing do). Perhaps my view is shaped by the fact that I live in South Dakota. Trump World. There are plenty of studies showing people like me (white, educated, academic, solidly middle-class) are culturally isolated from the average American. It’s hard to be so when you live in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I can say without a hint of irony that some of my best friends are Trump supporters. That means I can’t just dismiss such folk. I have to think a little about why they think the way they do. How do people who are smart, decent, well-meaning folks, often much better Christians than I am (or you are) support Trump? That doesn’t prevent me from having contempt for Trump. But it does spare me contempt for his supporters. Yes, some of them, especially the most prominent, are pathetically unctuous. But most are not.
A smart, original commentator should move beyond pieces that struggle to rise above “Trump is a poopyhead.” Yep. Message received. Over and over. And many of his high-profile supporters? Yep. Ditto. How about instead of repeating ourselves in obvious attempts at virtue signaling we instead try to understand the Trump phenomenon. My very unoriginal “kernel of truth theory” says that any movement with three or more adherents must be speaking some kind of truth, even if it is also surrounded by significant falsehood. Someday we will move beyond the personality of Trump. If we wish to quash the maleficent aftereffects of Trumpism we should understand some of those legitimate grievances or kernels of truth within the Trump movement and speak to them. Let me start with this hint: high profile media folks, elite politicians, and academics sneering at Trump voters and their concerns will only perpetuate Trumpism because it is the snobbery of these folks that in part stokes the movement.
If this harangue annoys you, I suppose it might be because I am full of beans. I am always open to that possibility. It is an intellectual paradox that we should be most skeptical when we are most certain. But perhaps the annoyance is because I have hit too close to home. If this is the case, perhaps it is time for some humility. I ask no one to support Trump. Obviously, I do not myself. But I might ask you to try to understand and to withhold at least a little judgment. And maybe we can all agree that we could use a miracle that will spare us of a Biden-Trump rematch.
The heat to light ratio coming off this piece is arguably more out-of-balance than one might wish.
Saying, eg, that “the Russia hoax really was a hoax” is fine as a talking-point, but the actual facts of the matter can’t be captured adequately by such simplicities. As the American Constitution Society summarizes, the Mueller Report described multiple occasions where Trump associates lied to investigators about Trump associate contacts with Russia. Trump associates George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen all admitted that they made false statements to federal investigators or to Congress about their contacts. Senior members of the Trump campaign, including Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner took a June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower, New York, after outreach from an intermediary informed Trump, Jr., that the Russians had derogatory information on Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Despite that, no Trump campaign official reported their contacts with Russia or WikiLeaks to U.S. law enforcement authorities during the campaign or presidential transition, as by law they were required to do. Mueler documented that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic,” including the hacking of Clinton campaign-related databases and release of stolen materials through Russian-created entities and Wikileaks. Trump is on record publicly encouraging the Russians to do just that. At the same time, Trump associates repeatedly lied to investigators about their contacts with Russians, and President Trump refused to answer questions about his efforts to impede federal proceedings and influence the testimony of witnesses. In the end, Mueller’s investigation produced thirty-seven indictments; seven guilty pleas or convictions; and overwhelmng evidence that the president obstructed justice on multiple occasions. Mueller also uncovered and fourteen additional criminal matters, referred to the Department of Justice.
We don’t need to untangle and exegete all that here; my point is only that the event requires a more rigorous analysis than “guy at the end of the bar”-level argumentation. Most of the other claims made herein are subject to similar liabilities.
At the same time, it is puzzling, at a minimum, to encounter the claim that some Trump supporters in South Dakota are “much better Christians than I am (or you are).” I won’t object on my own account, but my sympathies turn immediately to the many other readers of Current whose spiritual and ethical bona fides are here called into question. Exactly what kind of research lies behind this claim? Absent the necessary research (I’ll assume that there was none), what is the reasoning that resulted in such an accusation? Again, I can’t begin to imagine it. I am forced to wonder if this isn’t merely playing to the (in this case, home-state) gallery in much the way the author decries in others?
I don’t mean to imply that the general thrust of the piece here is off-base. Questioning what we are doing, why we are doing it, and if it’s having any salutary effects is an essential part of the intellectual vocation, one far too often neglected. Much of what occurs does seem to be something like preening (though personally I wouldn’t mind getting one of thse Georgetown cocktail party invitations I hear so much about–haven’t seen one yet). But such questions can be raised more effectively without all the dubious, dramatic decorations which function more as a distraction than an enhancement.