How many Trump supporters share his agenda?
Adam Serwer considers how easily voters he spoke to across the South dismissed Donald Trump’s worst traits as media propaganda:
During the last weeks of the campaign, when I was traveling in the South speaking with Trump voters, I encountered a tendency to deny easily verifiable negative facts about Trump. For example, one Trump voter I spoke with asked me why Democrats were “calling Trump Hitler.” The reason was that one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, the retired Marine general John Kelly, had relayed the story about Trump wanting “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” and saying that “Hitler did some good things.”
“Look back on the history of Donald Trump, whom they’re trying to call racist,” one Georgia voter named Steve, who declined to give his last name, told me. “If you ask somebody, ‘Well, what has he said that’s actually racist?,’ usually they can’t come up with one thing. They’ll say all kinds of things, and it’s like, ‘No, what?’ Just because the media says he’s racist doesn’t mean he’s racist.”
We on the left criticize voters on the right as existing in a disinformation bubble. But is that right? Perhaps we political junkies exist in one of our own? Sewer considers how blithely Trump voters tune out information that corrodes confidence in their tribal leader.
This is consistent with Trump voters simply ignoring or disregarding facts about Trump that they don’t like. Democratic pollsters told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that “voters didn’t hold Trump responsible for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, something Trump openly boasted about during the campaign.” Sargent added, “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency—even if they saw these things negatively—were his fault.” One North Carolina Trump voter named Charlie, who also did not give me his last name, told me that he was frustrated by gas prices—comparing them with how low they’d been when he took a road trip in the final year of Trump’s first term. That year, energy prices were unexpectedly depressed by the pandemic.
Many Trump voters seemed to simply rationalize negative stories about him as manufactured by an untrustworthy press that was out to get him. This points to the effectiveness of right-wing media not only in presenting a positive image of Trump, but in suppressing negative stories that might otherwise change perceptions of him. And because they helped prevent several worst-case scenarios during Trump’s first term, Democrats may also be the victims of their own success. Many people may be inclined to see warnings of what could come to pass as exaggerations rather than real possibilities that could still occur.
A 2024 candidate told me this week he was stunned by how many people across the region were disengaged from politics and knew little about current events. We’re not just talking conservatives, he said, but left-leaners as well. What’s happening in Washington that impacts their lives is as remote as the state capital four-to-six hours away.
As I keep saying, “normal” people are busy with their lives. Too busy to devote the kind of time and focus people like me do to current events. The job, the kids, the mortgage, the car repair, the storm damage … those are the only current events for which they’ve reserved mental bandwidth. What they think they know about everything else reaches them in snippets, factoids, like what “anyone is talking about” at the beauty parlor. What reaches them is the MEG economy (the price of milk, eggs, and gas). On those atmospherics and on tribal fidelity they cast their ballots. If they cast their ballots. Close to 90 million eligible voters stayed home in 2024.
So those who voted for Trump (and those who stayed home) may be shocked to find that what they don’t know can hurt them, Serwer suggests. They may be shocked when Trump actually pursues “the most extreme right-wing policies” he campaigned on and they dismissed as Trumpish bluster. What do average voters actually know about the cranks and crooks Trump wants to appoint to positions where they can do families harm?
This speaks to an understated dynamic in Trump’s victory: Many people who voted for him believe he will do only the things they think are good (such as improve the economy) and none of the things they think are bad (such as act as a dictator)—or, if he does those bad things, the burden will be borne by other people, not them. This is the problem with a political movement rooted in deception and denial; your own supporters may not like it when you end up doing the things you actually want to do.
All of this may be moot if Trump successfully implements an authoritarian regime that is unaccountable to voters—in many illiberal governments, elections continue but remain uncompetitive by design. If his voters are allowed to, some may change their minds once they realize Trump’s true intentions. Still, the election results suggest that if the economy stays strong, for the majority of the electorate, democracy could be a mere afterthought.
The car needs new tires. The price of bacon increased. Are they living in a bubble or are we?