Donald Trump’s critics like to paint his supporters as hardcore right-wingers. The truth is rather plainer: many of those who voted for Trump are refugees from the conservative establishment desperate for a leader unafraid to speak their truth.
We Americans are scared. Literally
Shamed by the elites, mocked for their beliefs – sidelined by rising ‘wokeness’ and DEI-culture for being white or straight or male – they saw in Trump a man-of-action sympathetic to their back-to-basics worldview. Tired of being told what to say and how to feel, Trump’s supporters were ready to reclaim their voices in the safest space possible: the ballot box.
The anti-elitist populism that swept Trump to power in 2016 remains alive and well. But today it looks far different. In place of hard-riding truckers and Carolina coal miners, are an almost unimaginable coalition of disaffected black, Jewish and Latino voters failed by the progressive establishment. The economy, of course, is among their chief concerns – particularly the disappearance of working-class jobs now being siphoned off by illegal migrants.
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