- Mar 11, 2015
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Trump’s Depravity Will Not Cost Him This Election
Many Americans know exactly who Trump is, and they like it.
By Tom Nichols
Yesterday, The Atlantic published another astonishing story by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about Trump’s hatred of the military. The reporting included, among other things, the retired general and former Trump chief of staff John Kelly confirming on the record that “Trump used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country,” a fact that Goldberg had first reported in September 2020. (Team Trump, unsurprisingly, continues to deny the story.) Not long after the publication of yesterday’s article, The New York Times published excerpts from interviews with Kelly in which Kelly said—on tape, no less—that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
Like many of Trump’s critics, I’ve repeatedly asked one question over the years: What’s it going to take? When will Republican leaders and millions of Trump voters finally see the immorality of supporting such a man? Surely, with these latest revelations, we’ve reached the Moment, the Turning Point, the Line in the Sand, right?
Wrong. As New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu—one of the many former Trump critics now back on the Trump train—said today on CNN in response to a question about Kelly’s comments: “With a guy like [Trump], it’s kinda baked into the vote.”
The belief that at some point Trump voters will have finally had enough is an ordinary human response to seeing people you care about—in this case fellow citizens—associate with someone you know to be awful. Much like watching a friend in an unhealthy relationship, you think that each new outrage is going to be the one that provokes the final split, and yet it never does: Your friend, instead of breaking off the relationship, makes excuses. He didn’t mean it. You don’t understand him like I do.
But this analogy is wrong, because it’s based on the faulty assumption that one of the people in the relationship is unhappy. Maybe the better analogy is the friend you didn’t know very well in high school, someone who perhaps was quiet and not very popular, who shows up at your 20th reunion on the arm of a loudmouthed boor—think a cross between Herb Tarlek and David Duke—who tells offensive stories and racist jokes. She thinks he’s wonderful and laughs at everything he says.
But what she really enjoys, all these years after high school, is how uncomfortable he’s making you.
And this, in brief, is the problem for Kamala Harris in this election. She and others have likely hoped that, at some point, Trump will reveal himself as such an obvious, existential threat that even many Republican voters will walk away from him. (She delivered a short statement today emphasizing Kelly’s comments.) For millions of the GOP faithful, however, Trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want Trump to be awful—precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins. If Trump’s campaign was focused on handing out tax breaks and lowering gas prices, he’d be losing, because for his base, none of that yawn-inducing policy stuff is transgressive enough to be exciting. (Just ask Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who each in their own way tried to run as a Trump alternative.)
Some Trump voters may believe his lies. But plenty more want Trump to be terrifying and stomach-turning so that reelecting him will be a fully realized act of social revenge. Harris cannot propose any policy, offer any benefit, or adopt any position that competes with that feeling.
Exactly why so many Americans feel this way is a complicated story—I wrote an entire book about it—but a toxic combination of social resentment, entitlement, and racial insecurity drives many Trump voters to believe not only that other Americans are looking down on them but that they are doing so while living an undeservedly good life. These others must be punished or at least brought down to a common level of misery to balance the scales, and Trump is the guy to do it.
www.theatlantic.com
So here you have it folks. We have part of the country who believe they are entitled and that others are taking what they BELIEVE THEY are entitled to and worked so hard for away. I just happen to fit the description of one of those others even as my ancestors worked for free and our free labor saved America so much money that it could become wealthy.Then my parents and grandprents just happened to pay taxes for programs that provided the types of people that support Trump today wth the things that allowed the white middle class to be created. WhiLe they were paying taxes to help create that midde class, they lived at an 80 percent rate of poverty in the 30's and a 55 percent rate just before Johnson implemented that Great Society program that trump supporters today blame fot the destruction of the back familiy, even though I had mom and dad with me as I grew up, and so did virtually every other black kid in our neighborhood.
In 2 weeks America could be looking at the beginning of the end because a group of people believe in an imaginary place that they want to go back to that never existed.
Many Americans know exactly who Trump is, and they like it.
By Tom Nichols
Yesterday, The Atlantic published another astonishing story by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about Trump’s hatred of the military. The reporting included, among other things, the retired general and former Trump chief of staff John Kelly confirming on the record that “Trump used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country,” a fact that Goldberg had first reported in September 2020. (Team Trump, unsurprisingly, continues to deny the story.) Not long after the publication of yesterday’s article, The New York Times published excerpts from interviews with Kelly in which Kelly said—on tape, no less—that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
Like many of Trump’s critics, I’ve repeatedly asked one question over the years: What’s it going to take? When will Republican leaders and millions of Trump voters finally see the immorality of supporting such a man? Surely, with these latest revelations, we’ve reached the Moment, the Turning Point, the Line in the Sand, right?
Wrong. As New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu—one of the many former Trump critics now back on the Trump train—said today on CNN in response to a question about Kelly’s comments: “With a guy like [Trump], it’s kinda baked into the vote.”
The belief that at some point Trump voters will have finally had enough is an ordinary human response to seeing people you care about—in this case fellow citizens—associate with someone you know to be awful. Much like watching a friend in an unhealthy relationship, you think that each new outrage is going to be the one that provokes the final split, and yet it never does: Your friend, instead of breaking off the relationship, makes excuses. He didn’t mean it. You don’t understand him like I do.
But this analogy is wrong, because it’s based on the faulty assumption that one of the people in the relationship is unhappy. Maybe the better analogy is the friend you didn’t know very well in high school, someone who perhaps was quiet and not very popular, who shows up at your 20th reunion on the arm of a loudmouthed boor—think a cross between Herb Tarlek and David Duke—who tells offensive stories and racist jokes. She thinks he’s wonderful and laughs at everything he says.
But what she really enjoys, all these years after high school, is how uncomfortable he’s making you.
And this, in brief, is the problem for Kamala Harris in this election. She and others have likely hoped that, at some point, Trump will reveal himself as such an obvious, existential threat that even many Republican voters will walk away from him. (She delivered a short statement today emphasizing Kelly’s comments.) For millions of the GOP faithful, however, Trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want Trump to be awful—precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins. If Trump’s campaign was focused on handing out tax breaks and lowering gas prices, he’d be losing, because for his base, none of that yawn-inducing policy stuff is transgressive enough to be exciting. (Just ask Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who each in their own way tried to run as a Trump alternative.)
Some Trump voters may believe his lies. But plenty more want Trump to be terrifying and stomach-turning so that reelecting him will be a fully realized act of social revenge. Harris cannot propose any policy, offer any benefit, or adopt any position that competes with that feeling.
Exactly why so many Americans feel this way is a complicated story—I wrote an entire book about it—but a toxic combination of social resentment, entitlement, and racial insecurity drives many Trump voters to believe not only that other Americans are looking down on them but that they are doing so while living an undeservedly good life. These others must be punished or at least brought down to a common level of misery to balance the scales, and Trump is the guy to do it.
Trump’s Depravity Will Not Cost Him This Election
Many Americans know exactly who Trump is, and they like it.
www.theatlantic.com
So here you have it folks. We have part of the country who believe they are entitled and that others are taking what they BELIEVE THEY are entitled to and worked so hard for away. I just happen to fit the description of one of those others even as my ancestors worked for free and our free labor saved America so much money that it could become wealthy.Then my parents and grandprents just happened to pay taxes for programs that provided the types of people that support Trump today wth the things that allowed the white middle class to be created. WhiLe they were paying taxes to help create that midde class, they lived at an 80 percent rate of poverty in the 30's and a 55 percent rate just before Johnson implemented that Great Society program that trump supporters today blame fot the destruction of the back familiy, even though I had mom and dad with me as I grew up, and so did virtually every other black kid in our neighborhood.
In 2 weeks America could be looking at the beginning of the end because a group of people believe in an imaginary place that they want to go back to that never existed.
