How Trump Became a Movement
By Todd Davis
The election is days away. Early and mail-in voting has begun in most states. Americans are witnessing one of the most significant moments in political history. Donald J. Trump has become far more than the Republican candidate for president, he has become a movement that stretches across racial and religious lines. Trump has created a coalition unprecedented in Republican politics and unique in America. His message, a blend of nostalgia, populism, and labor has created a rising tide reaching Americans and capitalizing on the economic divide that separates the haves and have-nots in the country.
A Remarkable Comeback Story
Four years ago, Trump’s political career looked deader than fried chicken after a mostly peaceful crowd entered the Capital building on January 6th. Although not directly involved, the Democrats and media, drowning in years of Trump Derangement Syndrome, cast the outgoing president as the conductor of what they would call an “insurrection”. Trump didn’t help himself, as he rarely does, choosing to emulate the Frank Sinatra song “My Way”, by refusing to concede what he called, for years, a rigged election.
In the wake of January 6th and Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, Trump faced a series of challenges that any reasonable political pundit would call career-ending. There was a televised “commission,” on paper bipartisan, although in reality stacked with anti-Trump, anti-MAGA political actors whose sole goal was to convict Trump in the court of public opinion regardless if they had to omit or suppress facts. Following the commission was a lengthy list of court cases brought by Democrats against Trump. Everything from alleged election interference to bribery to making banks too much money was thrown at the wall. Collectively, these cases became to be known as Lawfare, using the law as a weapon against Trump.
And yet, nothing stuck. Most Americans never bought into the manufactured hysteria over January 6, especially after the media completely ignored the BLM riots of 2020 that were far more destructive. All the Republicans who sat on the sham committee are gone, exiled, primaried, banished to the borders of Democratic orbits where they peddle lies no one is interested in hearing. People everywhere began to sympathize with Trump over the Lawfare cases, his struggle in the courts became symbolic of their struggle. Trump was facing an unfair system. This was something millions of Americans could relate to. Lawfare elevated Trump in the Republican primary sinking the campaigns of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. He emerged from the primary season not only with a united Republican Party behind him but also with growing appeal among independents and first-time voters.
The Economic Divide
Back before their internal coup when Joe Biden was running for president, Democrats spent most of the summer trying to convince Americans that Bidenomics was working. A strategy centered around trying to convince people that they weren’t struggling when a trip to the grocery store reinforced that they were was bound to fail. And it did. The American economy might be soaring for some. For many, it isn’t. Bidenomics, a phrase Democrats canned themselves, has become a punchline. The 2024 election has become one centered around the economic divide among Americans.
Donald Trump leaned into this by selecting J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance, a populist the likes we have not seen in recent political history, believes that globalization and foreign wars have been disastrous to the American middle class and the working poor. Instead of selecting a vanilla-flavored chamber of commerce Republican with nothing to say to the throngs of Americans flocking to the movement, Trump doubled down on his message. When you have a winning hand, play it, there is no need to hedge.
And that message resonates with every person struggling to make it under Obama/Biden/Harris. Democrats have been in charge for 12 of the last 16 years. You would think they’d take some responsibility for the state of the economy. Instead, they gaslight the American public telling them everything is fine. Everything is Awesome.
A Story From Michigan
Recently I interviewed a bartender living in Detroit. He runs a side business on Etsy, Retro Punk Design, selling retro gaming t-shirts and memorabilia. He told me,
Sundays I lay around and just rest from the shock and trauma. I worked 12 hours Saturday, from 2 pm to 2 am. That’s what you got to do to get ahead in Biden’s America. Then sell t-shirts and mouse pads on your days off.
I asked, are you standing 12 hours straight?
Yes, I’m a bartender. (laughs) You can’t sit down. Standing at attention. (laughs). Or running around.
The laugh was the sound of quiet desperation Tyler Durden talked about in Fight Club. This bartender told me he had recently turned 40. He has a BA in history. But there are no jobs for BAs in history if your family and friends don’t have coastal connections that get you into six-figure jobs at think tanks or NGOs. Instead it’s twelve-hour days on your feet. At 40. The America Kamala Harris promises him. I told him, that sounds like a prison sentence and a way to get a heart attack at 54.
For the poor, yes. (laughs) It’s the only plan I got right now brother (laughs). I mean from what I’ve looked just no one’s giving the poor people tax breaks. Like they’ll give all this money to people who want to buy a house or with kids but pretty much like your average working man they’re never gonna be like you know what, you can have a $20,000 tax credit that you don’t have to pay taxes on and can use however you want. I read on the Harris website, and her plan, she’s only gonna help Latino women first-time business owners with funding, not people like me who work and pay taxes for the war(s) every day. With a loan, I could hire staff to get my TikTok and other media platforms up and running. Start making money with my business. But that’s only for illegal immigrants who don’t have to pay taxes on their businesses for ten years. Then they give it to a family member and no more taxes for ten years. I see it all the time here. Never pay taxes for decades. I know I’ve seen their 21, 25 year old kids pull up in McLaren and Alpha Romeros brand new. You think they bought that working at Costco?
Where is this bartender going to go but to Trump? Are any of the pandering Democratic messages going to help his life? Democrats have spent years talking down to or flat-out ignoring men. The result has been telling. Men, of all races, are flocking to Trump. The movement transcends the racial identity that the Democrats have plied for years. This is a movement based on economics.
The Invasion
Immigration is the second most important issue (after the economy) for voters in the upcoming election. Statistics after statistics coming from the electorate hammers home the message; we do not want our country taken over by illegal immigration. President Joe Biden, easy to forget he’s technically still in charge of this country, has a 36% approval rating on immigration. Over 60% of Americans believe Kamala Harris will continue the unpopular Biden Administration policy on immigration according to the Harvard/Harris Poll. A more telling statistic; 62% of Americans oppose open borders 82% believe that Trump also opposes open borders while 58% believe Harris supports open borders.
America was largely founded from waves of immigration. The difference between past immigration trends is that previous ethnic groups coming into America assimilated into the great melting pot. Wherever they came from, they became American. There is a scene in the HBO series Deadwood, a series about how a frontier town becomes part of America as the nation expands West that can viewed as a microcosm of how the country was built. During this scene, the leader of the Chinese contingent in Deadwood, Mr. Wu cuts off his ponytail, a traditional symbol of Chinese identity at the time, and says
Wu America!
Past generations of immigrants wanted to become Americans. They might be Chinese, or Irish, or Italian by ethnicity, but they came here to become an American and identified as that. Today’s immigrants come to America, and other nations in Western Europe, and do not assimilate. They exist as ethnic blocs within the parent country still identifying as coming from their country of origin. The change has largely been brought about by neoliberal ideology that projects America as a morally evil country and the majority white citizens of the country as oppressors. Viewed in this light, why should anyone coming to America assimilate with that?
Needless to say, most of the working Americans who make up the country do not share this view of America’s origin story. Project 1619 is a concept exposed by those with too much money to spend. A post-modern evolution of the collegiate coffee house conversation. If it were as harmless as that Project 1619 could be ignored. But it isn’t. It seems like the latte-drinking liberals have a desire simmering under the surface to punish the middle class and the working poor. Illegal immigration is a convenient tool for that, and if it buys them a few votes in the future, that’s a bonus. An overwhelming majority of Americans want border control and an end to illegal immigration. And yet it goes on and on. Millions of undocumented aliens crossing into the country with no vetting, no guard rails, and no end in sight. Why won’t the government stop it?
Trump has positioned himself as the person who will stop the invasion. He has shifted his position from the popular build a wall and make Mexico pay for it in 2016 to calls for mass deportation in 2024. Voters will remember that Trump never did get his wall built, largely due to obstruction from Democrats and controlled opposition Republicans in his party. Will he succeed in enacting mass deportations? Maybe, maybe not. Whether he is successful or not isn’t the point, voters are convinced that Trump is going to at least try, and more importantly, that Harris is going to allow the current state of immigration to go on and on and on.
Populism and Personality
Trump has a manic charisma that draws people to him. He’s had this for decades. Long before Hollywood viewed Trump as Hitler, stars wanted to be in Trump’s orbit. Trump has successfully redirected that charisma to the working class of America who now view the narcissistic billionaire not only as someone who speaks to them but as one of them.
Trump recently took a shift at McDonald’s making french fries and working the drive-through window. Democrats and their media allies panicked over how impactful this moment was; Trump doing the work his increasingly proletariate base does, by claiming it was staged. News flash, every political appearance by a presidential candidate is staged to a certain degree. That isn’t the point. Instead, ask yourself this: What other candidate in the last 50 years could have pulled this off so convincingly? Trump seamlessly interacted with his coworkers who make $15-20 an hour. He was a complete natural serving Chicken McNuggets. Contrast with Kamala Harris who melts down into a confusing word salad every time she’s asked something off-script. She can’t respond to anything she wasn’t programmed to say.
All of these details accumulate and add up. People gravitate toward Trump and believe he’s one of them, even if he isn’t. The hope is that along the way, Trump has developed enough of an affinity with the people who come to his rallies, that he has seen enough of their concerns and how hard life is for them in modern America, and that he will enact policy that will, for once, improve their declining standard of living.
America has welcomed immigration before, Ellis Island, we get it. Those Americans didn’t have a 35 trillion dollar deficit and wars to fund across the globe. Maybe we should stop making war? Great idea, and yet it seems only Trump is committed to keeping America out of wars. No new wars were started under Trump’s administration. It took Biden less than two years to get involved in a major war in Ukraine and a colonial war in Gaza. Saddled with all these economic burdens, illegal immigrants now only ensure more competition for housing, jobs, and food driving prices up for most Americans.
Democrats were the party of hope and change back in 2008. During the next decade, Democrats have divided America along racial lines, driven housing prices through the stratosphere, allowed over ten million illegal immigrants into the country, and gotten into half a dozen wars. Change, it was, but precious little hope. Trump offers voters a way to repudiate that. A way forward while taking what worked in the past, he’s become more than a presidential candidate, he has become a movement that has forever changed American politics.
