Photo by Lorie Shaull, Wiki Commons
Photo by Lorie Shaull, Wiki Commons
Trump is closing his argument by reminding his base how much they are like him—that “we” all feel the same way he does about immigrants, Blacks, women, the disabled and everyone who is not white Christian followers of Donald Trump.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on with Donald Trump’s recent use of profane language and the new level of personal attacks he’s hitting on the campaign trail. Listen to how he described Kamala Harris in Detroit on Friday: “She’s a shit vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here, you’re fired. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala.” The next day, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump led a call-and-response to his audience with, “Such a horrible four years. We had a horrible—think of the—everything they touch turns to…”
“Shit!” came the eager response from his rally-goers. Trump then urged them to get out and vote to send the message, “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president.”
The New York Times reported that in his opening at the same Pennsylvania rally, Trump’s “monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis.” Trump’s “monologue” about his “friend Arnold Palmer” consisted of this: “This is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s unbelievable.’” The Times reported that Trump “chuckled” at the crowd’s reaction, shortly later confiding, “I had to tell you the shower part of it because it’s true. What can I tell you? We want to be honest.”
The Times reported that Trump’s advisers “billed Saturday’s speech as the start of his efforts to make a closing argument to voters.” If it’s true that this is all part of his “closing argument,” then what Trump said in Detroit and Pennsylvania wasn’t the decompensation Mary Trump wrote that she saw in him the other day. It was purposeful. He meant every word.
What does that say not only about Trump, but about his voters? What is he trying to do?
Without necessarily knowing what he’s doing, I think he’s breaking down childhood permission structures and inviting his audience to join in. Think about learning so-called dirty words for the first time as a child and your parents’ reaction when you came home and used them. A common reaction would be, Wash those words out of your mouth! We don’t talk that way in this house.
Because you’re not expecting it, the word, “shit,” coming out of the mouth of a nine-year-old can be at once shocking, endearing, even titillating. Now turn that scenario upside down and think of the same word uttered by no less an authority figure than a presidential candidate. The reaction by a crowd of adults can be nearly identical. Oh, my God, he went there! Isn’t that amazing? I was just thinking the same thing myself.
Trump is doing what he’s always done: breaking rules and norms. He’s like the bad boy in class that called the teacher an asshole and his parents got called into the principal’s office. He got in trouble, but it made him famous, because everybody agreed with him, even some of the teachers. The teacher is an asshole. He’s the one who had the guts to say it.
Trump has been bringing his MAGA base along with him as he has crossed one boundary after another, from calling Mexican immigrants “criminals and rapists” to saying “there are good people on both sides” of a demonstration by Nazi sympathizers and white supremacists in Charlottesville, to calling the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 “a day of love” in a speech at a rally on Thursday, to comparing those arrested for crimes at the Capitol to “the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”
All this stuff is far outside the bounds of political discourse in this country, and pundits have pointed out time and again that his MAGA base has come to expect it of Trump. In fact, they love him for it.
He has built a primal connection with a large part of our population that was clearly looking for one. To be part of what we might call America’s white underclass—those without college educations, who cannot afford to buy a home, who live paycheck-to-paycheck, who believe that “others” have been given what they haven’t, such as preference in college admissions or going to the “head of the line” when it comes to jobs—is to remain in a childlike state of need and jealousy of those seen to be “better” than they are.
And along comes Donald Trump, the guy from The Apprentice, and his followers think that not only does he believe in them, but he also speaks their language. He isn’t afraid to describe a woman as “hot,” he’s not afraid to make fun of disabled people, he’s not afraid of being called out for saying that Blacks are given advantages denied to whites.
This is the way Trump got away with the stuff he said on the Access Hollywood tapes. He said it was “just locker room talk,” and for many people, especially those who voted for him a couple of weeks later, that’s exactly what it was. What was his description of Arnold Palmer in the clubhouse showers? Locker room talk. What’s dropping the occasional N-word? Locker room talk. What’s a joke about the guy who “spazzed out” on the third tee? Locker room talk.
At his rally in Detroit, Trump riffed on an attack on Joe Biden, couched in language about his wife: “Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,” Trump yelled. “Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country. Get that guy the hell off our—get him up, Jill, slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. We want him off the couch to get out and vote.”
That’s the rant of every employee who ever had a boss he disrespected. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He even throws in “we” in the final sentence of the rant, bringing his MAGA followers along with him. To Trump It’s not just him who disrespects Joe Biden and his wife, Jill. It’s everyone at his rallies, everyone in their neighborhoods back home, everyone in their families.
This stuff is way more dangerous than it seems. Adolf Hitler talked about what “we” know about the Jews, how “we” need them out of our country, how “we” know about their greed and their otherness, their non-Christianity, their Jewishness.
Trump is closing his argument with his base by reminding them how much they are like him, that “we” all feel the same way he does about immigrants and Blacks and women and the disabled and everyone who is not just like they are, which is white and Christian followers of Donald Trump.
We’ll see in two weeks how well the two closing arguments work: Kamala Harris’ empathy for, among others, those Trump and his MAGA base hate, versus the hatred itself.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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