Why Still Trumpets For Trump?
Answering Bret Baier's Ignored Question About Trump's Popularity (Vol. 4; Issue 42)
During her recent interview on Fox News, Kamala Harris refused to answer Bret Baier’s oft-repeated question regarding why many Americans support Donald Trump. Harris dodged it repeatedly. She realized it meant swimming into shark-infested waters. And, how was it relevant to her policies? Later, when Baier asked Harris if she considered Trump supporters “stupid,” Harris at least said, “I would never say that about the American people.” But, Baier’s question begs for an answer from a psychological viewpoint.
Before responding further, the fact that Trump is unequivocally the most unfit individual EVER to run for President cannot be overemphasized. An abbreviated list of disqualifications include two impeachments, threatening political opponents, disrespecting women, planning to criminalize abortion, promising to deport millions of immigrants, spreading propaganda (like that immigrants mostly came from insane asylums, eat pets, rape and murder Americans, etc.), expecting loyalty like mob bosses, labelling the deadly January 6th insurrection a “day of love,” responding inadequately to the Covid pandemic, denying the 2020 election result, and actively sowing division among the American people.
Here we stand, the most consequential election of our lives two weeks away, and Trump’s proposals remain vague. They include cutting taxes, imposing tariffs, sealing the border wall, banning abortion, and ending Ukrainian and Israeli wars. And, just how will he achieve these? No comprehensible answers are offered. Meanwhile, Trump has riffed about Arnold Palmer’s penis, donned an apron at McDonald’s to serve fries to pre-selected customers, “danced” onstage to Ave Maria while supporters fainted from the heat, and made decidedly racist comments about Harris like, “she’s lazy as hell,” instead of addressing the real issues.
Many answers to Baier’s question about those still trumpeting for Trump seem almost too commonsensical. But, they gain credibility when thinking of them as flowing underground in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind. Fear arising from two hot wars, inflation, global warming, and more agitates such underground flows; fear also causes much of the detachment seen in many younger voters. Here is a sampling of the unconscious themes propelling the Trump machine.
Trump is a brilliant rhetorician (as was Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Orban, and other autocrats). He has charisma. But with his charisma comes the con (Lovell, 2007; Altucher, 2017). The word “con,” a fragment of the word word, “confidence,” refers to certain persons’ capacity to convince others, even intelligent and highly educated ones, to trust them. The trust invites the subsequent scam. Trump’s words have power to convince—regardless of facts.
Furthermore, many Americans find Trump’s simple answers to complex problems appealing. Phrases like, “I’ll bring down inflation” or “I’ll end the war in Ukraine even before I take office” or “I’ll make America great again” are but a sampling of his empty promises. Their seeming clarity captivates many. Ideas like denial, or dissociation, form psychological subcategories emerge from the apparent clarity.
Denial works by pushing unwanted mental content out of consciousness. The power of Trump’s rhetoric, combined with the public’s need for simple answers in our astonishingly complex times, elicit such a defensive maneuver. Denial is, by definition, an unconscious process.
This denial is on display when many ignore Trump’s threats to prosecute “the enemy within.” He’s made these comments about his critics; he’s made them about journalists. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board downplays these threats but, interestingly, without excluding their possibility. They noted that Trump makes “typically grandiose and self-defeating statements” about using military force against his critics. But they then apologized for him, writing that: “Mr. Trump made clear after some rambling that he was talking about destructive riots [adding he would] certainly not [use force] against my opponents—it’s against civil unrest.”
Many voters deny what the WSJ calls rambling and Trump calls dodging and weaving. These appear to be, instead, evidence of actual cognitive deficits. An illustration is his recent rant about boats and sharks, reprinted below.* Why did Biden wisely step down because of his failing mind-body, but the public ignores obvious signs of dementia in Trump? He will be the oldest president to ever assume the office if he is elected.
And then there’s the nagging problem of Trump’s delusional beliefs he was elected in 2020, and his contributing to a first-ever, deadly insurrection at the Capitol. Many voters probably sign off on reassurances offered by, again, media like the WSJ editorial board. They naively believe democracy’s countervailing systems will control Trump, writing,
Whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances.
That was then, and now the checks and balances are either diminished or absent. Even though the WSJ supports Trump, their editorials read like manufacturers knowingly selling defective products. WSJ writers, who strive for journalistic excellence in their news department, may rightly feel concerned about their lives if Trump is elected. He does anything but hide his contempt for the so-called fourth estate, namely independent journalism that informs the people without government influence. In 2020, Trump tweeted:
The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!
Responding to Maria Bartiromo’s recent Fox News interview of him, Trump reiterated threats against his critics, saying,
The bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroyed our country …We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.
Trump often repeats the phrase, “enemy from within,” to specifically threaten Democrats like California Reps. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, and Adam Schiff, a Senate candidate. He regularly rails against the media using the same phrase. Given such oft-violent rhetoric, do his political opponents, as well as journalists, need to worry about their lives if Trump gets re-elected? From 2000 to early 2024, 163 journalist were murdered in Mexico.** Ninety-nine percent of the crimes went unpunished. Are we destined to become a country where opposition is dangerous or banned?
Trump’s charisma falsely reassures. It diminishes the need to dig into the complexity of the many worrisome issues before us. Some Americans’ legitimate concerns about immigration, for example, find Trump’s promise of mass deportations a clear solution. But, in truth, it would come with serious complications. What if states resist federal efforts to displace the immigrants? What will happen when immigrant organizations file lawsuits to prevent the deportations? What about the businesses that thrive on their cheap labor?
Racism is another oft-unconscious theme closely related to the immigrant issue. Consciously abhorrent to them, many remain attracted to the wish to retain America as a Caucasian-dominated culture. Christian nationalists overtly promote a Caucasian America. They fail to understand America’s dynamically changing demographics. We’ve always been a nation of immigrants, but Latin Americans constitute a growing and, for the most part, productive subculture. Their joining us is constructive for the economy and unavoidable due to climactic and political factors. Many need the sanctuary we can provide. How about embracing them, and other immigrants as well? Just because Caucasian Europeans dominated America for its first 200 years need not mean it should continue. It cannot. Times change. Evolve or die. And Trump’s claiming they consist primarily of murderers, rapists, and psychotics are beyond grossly exaggerated. They are, frankly, racist.
And then there’s denial of Trump’s personal immaturity. In political scientist Daniel Drezner’s (2020) book, titled The Toddler in Chief, he describes more than 1,000 instances in which Trump staffers viewed him as an impetuous child. Trump’s 2017 deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh, describes working with Trump as “trying to figure out what a child wants.” Even his loyal strategist, Steve Bannon, once complained, “I’m sick of being a wet nurse for a 71-year-old.” It is crucial to note that, whereas adults were in the room last time Trump was president, only loyalists will be present in the next one. And, they’ll be chosen by Trump and the Project 2025 folks wishing to promote their agenda. The former guardrails will vanish.
The last item on this necessarily incomplete list is sexism. Forty-five men have served in 46 American presidencies. With the exception of Barack Obama, they’ve all been Caucasian. Herein lies another likely vortex of unconscious bias. Can we trust a woman to lead our country? Will she be too emotional? Will she be incompetent? And, OMG, what about a mixed race woman from California? Shouldn’t we elect another Caucasian man because, well, that’s the way it’s always been?
We like to think that, because of a few decades of feminist influences, we’ve lost any sexism. Not true. We hold many unconscious sexist biases. These inclinations churn underground, distorting our capacities to make well-informed decisions.
I worry about how much sexism, as well as these other unconscious psychological themes, play into the mind of a distant nephew of mine studying astrophysics at MIT. We’ve restarted conversations, by text and email, as the election approaches. He’s beyond intelligent. But, we seem deadlocked in Trump versus Harris discussions. He plans to vote for Trump—despite personally disliking him. He thinks the Republican party will best attend to the rule of law, the constitution, and the future of democracy.
Here denial seems apparent in its purest form, or perhaps its more the subcategory of dissociation (meaning compartmentalization of mental content). My nephew reads extensively, and he follows the issues affecting America closely. But I fear he unwittingly fell into a deep well of dissociated and distorted information. Social media likely deserves the blame. Its algorithms tailor information to individual readers, editing and omitting contrary information and creating laser-like reinforcements of singular themes. In his case, they sound like the primary sound bites one sees on Fox News.
If considering only those three themes—law, constitution, and democracy—how can any Republican policies possibly override factual information about Trump’s history? How can he deny Trump’s continuing to propagate lies regarding the 2020 election? In December 2022, Trump complained (on his Truth Social platform) that the 2020 election results were “a Massive Fraud” which:
allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution… Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!
Or how can he forget Trump’s role in the January 6th insurrection, and his saying “so what?” when told that VP Mike Pence’s safety was at risk that day? My nephew expresses concern about political wokeness, excessive regulations, and uncontrolled immigration, but do these even come close to the dangers posed by another Trump presidency?
Most importantly, my nephew’s right-wing belief system ignores the power of the executive branch. Not only is it already powerful, but Trump plans to enhance it (with the help of the Project 2025 agenda). Having Trump with nuclear codes nearby, hungry for the power to prosecute using his personal DOJ, completely overshadows any hopes for future Republican sway. Until Trump is off the scene, the party demonstrates all the qualities of a cult of personality.
I love you, oh distant nephew, but you’re veering too close to the edge of the delusional. Although we’ve never been that close, I shall text you daily in a frenetic effort to bring you back from the dark side. You’re dead wrong. Those who critically analyze what is basically propaganda, or who sift through information in search of real “facts,” can only see the unprecedented perils of another Trump presidency.
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*I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’
By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark — I watched some guys justifying it today. ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy —
He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now who really got decimated and other people, too.’ A lot of shark attacks.
So I said, ‘So there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards. Or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking and water goes over the battery? The boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’
**Consider watching the State of Silence on Netflix; it’s a disturbing exploration of the perils facing journalists in Mexico.
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References
Altucher, J. (2016). The Ten Commandments of Con Men. Online magazine, Medium, available at Mission.org.
Drezner, D.W. (2020). The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lovell, S. (2007). How to Cheat at Everything: A Con Man Reveals the Secrets of the Esoteric Trade of Cheating, Scams, and Hustles. New York: Running Press Adult.
The Fascist Meme Returns. Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board Opinion, published October 20, 2024.