Must Read of the Day – ‘I Listened to a Trump Supporter’

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The following article by David A Hill Jr is simply outstanding.

Here are some powerful excerpts from the piece: I Listened to a Trump Supporter

I talked at length with a Trump supporter I grew up around. I wanted to understand. I respected her growing up. I wanted to know why a person as kind and compassionate as I remember her is voting for someone like Donald Trump.

She was a family friend, a good person. In rural Ohio, everything was tight. Money, jobs. If you really needed quick cash, she’d put you to work doing landscaping. She’d pay fairly and reliably for the area.

She’s voting for Donald Trump. I disagree with her choice, but I understand why she rejects Clinton so fiercely, and why she’s been swept up in Donald Trump’s particular brand of right-wing populism. I feel that on the left, it’s increasingly easy to ignore these people, to disregard them, to write them off as racists, bigots, or uneducated. I think that’s a loss for everyone involved, and that sometimes listening can help you to at least understand why a person is making the choices they make, so you can work on the root causes. For her, the root cause isn’t racism. In fact, I remember her as one of the only people in the area who proudly hired black workers, in a place where that was a huge issue. She fought over that choice.

But that’s enough background. Let me relay a bit of what she told me.

She’s a person who built her business from the ground up. She wasn’t rich, but was very comfortable for the area. She had a nice house, a nice car, and was stable. She achieved the American dream of not having to struggle. Things changed during the housing crisis. A landscaping business requires customers who need landscaping, and people who don’t own homes just don’t need landscaping. In some of these neighborhoods, one in five people lost their homes. That almost immediately turns a successful landscaping business into a struggling one.

Then there was a domino effect. She couldn’t pay for her lawn-care equipment leases and loans. That hurt her work efficiency. Then, she lost her car. But that didn’t stop the payments. Then, she lost her house. She slowly had to let go all of her employees, until it was just her, hand-mowing lawns for cash the way you might expect a high school student in the summertime.

She told me that every week, it seemed there was another default letter, another foreclosure, another bank demanding more blood from her dry veins. To her, that pile of default notices and demands for payment looked suspiciously similar to Hillary Clinton’s top donor list.

She lost everything she worked so hard for. Obama swore he was going to help. The Wall Street bailout did seem to help Wall Street. But it did absolutely nothing for her. She turns on the news and sees how the Dow Jones is doing better than ever. But that didn’t bring her house and livelihood back. Liberals insist that Obama’s made her life better. But, now she’s driving a car that falls apart randomly while having to pay those same banks for a car she doesn’t own and never will. It’s difficult to convince someone whose life is objectively worse that their life is better. And it’s disingenuous to try. You can break down the specifics, sure. But when someone’s hungry, and you’re busy silencing their complaints by telling them how well world hunger is improving, you’re just going to upset them.

This is not a person who is stupid or racist. She knows Bush caused the economy collapse with his irresponsible tax policies and wars. But she saw liberals as fighting for the banks’ recovery, to hell with her needs. She sees in Hillary someone who celebrates that approach. Who measures US success by the success of multinational mega corporations — corporations who undercut and destroy local businesses. This is a person who grew up in a town with a friendly neighborhood general store, a locally-owned hardware store, farmers’ markets, florists, and auto shops. All of these businesses closed when Walmart moved into town. All their owners now work at that Walmart for a fraction of their previous wages, no benefits, and no hope for something better, something of their own. And now, she sees a free trade supporting former Walmart executive about to come in to office, and it feels like salt in her community’s wounds.

This is a wounded person. Insulting her or continuing to hurt her isn’t going to help. She’s swept up in Trump’s message because she feels someone’s finally listening. Right-wing populism is an awful thing. But desperate people with their backs against the wall will grasp on to whatever they feel will bring a change. Neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable for these people.

Over the past few years, she tried getting back in her business. But a corporation moved in and is operating far cheaper, using undocumented immigrant labor. I should note: She specifically said she doesn’t hold it against the migrant workers. As she said, “They’ve got to take whatever jobs they can get. Just like we do. It’s not their fault. They didn’t choose to make prices so low that legal businesses couldn’t compete.” She was literally a “job creator”. And she wasbeing priced out by the very people Donald Trump insists are pricing her out. That hurts everyone, and it adds an air of authenticity to what he says.

I asked her if she supports Trump’s Mexico wall. She told me, “It doesn’t matter if I do. Hillary wants a wall, too. That wall’s gonna happen.” She wasn’t simply making this up. She’s heard this from many sources, Clinton being one of them. So to her, the idea of a border wall is a non-issue. I pressed her on the issue, and she said she thinks, “It’s a waste of money. If someone wants to cross the border, they’re gonna cross the border.”…

A few times, she seemed ashamed of things Trump’s said or done. I’d ask her to unpack her feelings. She said he sometimes upsets her, but “If you wait and wait for a flawless candidate, you’ll never find one.” She said she’d be much prouder to vote for Trump if he’d tone down his rhetoric.

This fits into my strongly held belief that people are looking for an excuse to vote for Trump. All he has to do to win is tone down some of his more heinous and idiotic tendencies.

I talked to her a bit about Bernie Sanders, to see what she thought of him. She told me, “He seemed like a nice enough guy. But I didn’t pay him much mind because there was no way he was gonna beat Clinton.” I talked with her about his platform, his policy proposals. She lit up. She told me, “It’s a real shame he didn’t make it.” She told me that if she knew him, his record, and his proposals, she’d have voted for him. I said that since the primary concluded, Hillary’s shifted some to adopt policies similar to his, and I asked if that changed her mind. She told me, “It doesn’t matter what she says. It matters what she’s done.”

No amount of insulting her from an ivory tower is going to change her mind. No amount of guffawing about her lack of education, her self-deception, her racism, or her internalized misogyny is going to change her mind. The only thing she’ll listen to is a promise of real change to the system that’s hurt her. If the Democratic Party can’t offer her a viable alternative, we’re going to see another neck-and-neck election in 2020, and in 2024, and in 2028.

These people need a populist answer. They need someone willing to listen to their very real concerns, and offer solutions that don’t look like Band-Aids on bullet wounds. If they had that on the left, we wouldn’t even be discussing Ohio as a “swing state”.

Right now, this is the discourse we’re seeing about Trump supporters. This only emboldens those attitudes. To people like her, this feels like the left is laughing at her for her unwillingness to get in line and support the things that have left her broke and broken.

The above excerpts are not the entire piece. You should read the whole thing: I Listened to a Trump Supporter.

The more deeply I think about this election, the more I agree that the above sentiments motivate Trump voters far more than feelings of racism or hate. As I noted in a piece published a few weeks ago, The Status Quo vs. Donald Trump:

This isn’t about me. This is about the American voter, and the more time passes, the more I understand the motivations of the vast majority of Trump supporters. It isn’t xenophobia or racism, it’s a vote against the status quo and the way they’ve strip mined and destroyed this country. It’s a FU vote and a major gamble, but it’s not as irrational or hateful as you might think.

This doesn’t mean that Trump won’t betray his supporters and prove to be the Republican version of Barack Obama, but it does mean that the dominant media narrative characterizing Trump supporters as a bunch of racist, uneducated brutes is pretty much just dishonest, elitist propaganda.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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41 thoughts on “Must Read of the Day – ‘I Listened to a Trump Supporter’”

  1. Yep. Trump is an Ass Hat. But at least we stand a chance with him. There is absolutely NO chance Hillary will do anything right. If her voters wiuld just do the slightest bit of research…they’d vote Trump. The Clintons are THE MOST corrupt people in the entire world. That’s really a bold statement. So one has to wonder..well why would a dudeman say such a thing? Research the 30+ murders with John Ashe being recent. He was to testify against her. And the similar vein of stories about several others.

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  2. Hello,

    This article by David A Hill Jr, and posted by Michael Krieger, is so full of lies and underhanded statements that it should be banned from the internet.

    But, it is the USA, and even fools can type anything.

    Trump in 2016,
    Bill Moore

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  3. I like his rhetoric. I like to see the politically correct, special flowers get triggered. I like it when they show their true colors by violence. Why do you think Trump is so popular? It’s the backlash against the current administrations forcing of various subcultures upon us all.

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    • I think you are an extreme exception then Michael. I agree, most of them say the typical “I’m tired of such and such” or “No more career politicians”, all the while they don’t know what the hell they are talking about as they are just repeating catch phrases…anyways I’m digressing. Ultimately from the tons I’ve talked to and constantly see on my news feed on FB, all are either full blown racists or subtlety so. Again, if the majority of the herd that you are around aren’t, which I know there are some – they are in the minority.

    • Sure, just like all of those who voted for “Brexit”.

      I know many people who are voting Trump including some family members who have only voted Democrat their entire lives. They are not racists, not even close. Many are married to minorities.

      Perhaps, you need to revisit your definition of a racist.

    • I’m not racist.

      But… so what? What if you have met a lot of racist Trump supporters.

      What are you implying? And why does it matter?

    • Again, Alec, along with Michael, I believe your experiences are in the minority and I have a clear view of racism. I don’t know what the hell the Brexit has to do with this convo, but ok.

    • Kevin, when the Brexit vote was occurring, those who believed the best thing for England was to leave the EU were labelled as xenophobic and racist.

      Any rational person knew this was not the case and simply a tactic used to scare people into voting to stay.

      I believe the same thing is occurring with many of the Trump supporters with the MSM leading the charge. They constantly show the worst of the lot and slant the coverage. Meanwhile, they never show the Democrat supporter who engages in violence and some of the worst racial rhetoric I have seen. Thankfully, there is the internet which allow for a full and clear picture of the entire scene on both sides.

      I believe it is your experiences that are the ones that are in the minority.

      Nearly every family member and friend I have that is voting for Hillary is hostile to a point where they can’t even have a conversation with them. They are unable to hear any other point of view regardless if they agree or disagree.

    • This “racism” meme is pure divide and conquer from the oligarchs. Yes, there is racism in this country, and it is mostly state sponsored. Look at the prison system, public schools, welfare programs, drug war, etc. All controlled by the government and all racist at their core. The average person sees the results of this, and some of them blame the victims and make the racism worse. So you’re blaming the waves instead of focusing on what’s causing the tide.

      I’m sure there are racists voting for Trump, but there are a lot of people who are using Trump as their anti-establishment vote. I don’t agree with it, but I am not as afraid of him as I am of Hillary. We are in World War III quickly if she makes it into office. We will also get more trade deals that will leave us all as plebs.

      Thanks for sharing Mike. I would vote if Justin Amash or someone similar was running. Ron Paul was the last guy I voted for. To hell with the rest of them.

  7. This election is like no other. Boiled down, it’s about whether America will be a nation that holds the individual as supreme over the state – at least to some extent – or whether we will forfeit out history and founding principles to be assimilated into the global Borg. Trump at least speaks to the individual in all of us. Hillary has a full fare, final destination ticket on the globalist train.

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  8. Despite David Hill’s lame attempts at equanimity, he still outs himself as just another partisan putz.

    Go fuck yourself, David.

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  9. What I still don’t understand is how they can throw around the pejorative “right wing populism” and not get smacked down hard for it? What the hell? The left wing has caused mass slaughter around the world over and over again and yet, somehow, American leftists, who possess the same violent tendencies are overlooked. I know, I know, it’s all about World War II and fascism and extreme nationalism. I’m willing to take the chance that we won’t have that happen again. The really sad truth about the left is that the fascists were right to attack the communists–there was no other choice. It was one seedy, violent mass delusion versus another.

    The other thing that gets me about the article is how the woman being interviewed would have liked Bernie Sanders? How do you get from business owner/self-sufficient to sucking on the government teat? It’s like people just can’t help themselves when it comes to taking free handouts. Listen up: I don’t want handouts, subsidies, tax breaks, none of it. What I want is real freedom and a hands-off approach. You can take both your neo-Marxist bs and the fascist police-state bs and cram it!

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  10. This post could not be more poorly written and partisan if it tried.

    1. Bush’s policies were not the root cause of the Housing or Financial crisis. The roots of these crises were sowed in the WJC administration. Someone, I had thought did a very good job at the time until I started looking into the crash.

    2. Leftists such as Obama and Hillary Clinton are using Fascist rhetoric and Fascist groups like BLM to intimidate the public into compliance. False Bigotry and Racism are the tool used to empower this cause.

    3. Clinton and Obama are globalists representing an establishment crowd only interested in furthering their power, not their country. They would both have their country take a backseat to their power grabbing agendas….UN, TPP, Climate Change, etc.

    The only disillusioned person in this article is the author and person posting this article.

    Trump may not be perfect, but he represent and embodies the death of PC and the Fascism it has brought. He also represents Country over ideology something desperately needed given the damage done by the establishment politicians. This is not Left or Right, it is Up or Down.

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    • If you can’t admit that the Bush administration had a huge impact on “We the People” then your just like a leftist except on the other extreme of willful blindness . Do you not recall the bull shit that is 911, what exactly happened I don’t know but it is sure as fuck not the “official story”, do you not recall Bush appointing Hank “Goldman Sachs” Paulson bailing out wall street at all of our expense, do you not recall Afghanistan, and Iraq and the fact that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein both denied involvement of 911 and could not be proven to be involved, SEE – Global Research article,Osama bin Laden Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks? Where is the Evidence? as well as our own FBI’s admittance that there is no proof.
      Yes your right ol Billy Clinton is a douche and quiet possibly a pedophile psychopath, Obama is a continuation of more of the same leftist/neo-con whatever we should label it and Hillary will probably be worse. But to turn a blind eye to Cheney, Libbey (former democrat turned republican), Rumsfeld and ol Georgie Boy himself is the most will-fully blind, B.S. typical American needing some home team belief structure, cowardice ass non-sense I ever heard. Except I see it every fucking day. There is no right and left you fucking fools. Hillary will suck and I’ll bet $100.00 to anyone that Trump will too.

    • Black Cat –

      Where exactly am I stating Bush’s administration did not have a huge impact on “We The People”?

      Where exactly did I say I supported invading Iraq, Afghanistan, or believe the “official” account of 9/11. I didn’t, because I don’t.

      Where did I state these endless wars didn’t help accelerate us down the to the economic crash? I didn’t because I believe they did. I also know we were going there anyway because WJC and Greenspan put us on that path.

      Where did I state putting another Goldman Sachs alumni in place at the Treasury was a good idea? I didn’t because they have all proven to be crooks. Just as Geitner, Summers, Bernanke, and Yellen have proven to be deceitful and crooks.

      You are making a gross assumption, where I was commenting on points made in the actual article.

      So, please spare me the attacks before understanding where I am coming from.

      Trump is not a politician. Although some of his ideas may align with the so-called Right, some align with the so-called Left. I do agree there is not Right or Left, but rather the Elites and ordinary everyday Americans. This possibly is why establishment Republicans and many on the “Right” take every chance they get to attack him and continually announce they won’t support him. It is also possible that Trump is a Trojan horse for the Elites. One can never know.

      It is more possible than not that Trump will be a terrible President. However, there is still a chance with him that he is genuine and will put country first – however slim that may be. With Hillary, it is guaranteed there is no hope.

      So, what I have posted he represents is the case for most supporting him. In fact, in many ways it is the only hope they have.

    • Fair enough, and after your clarification I understand where your coming from. My emotions will get the better of me especially as I see so many people side with either a left or right extremism which I feel is a huge division within our county and seriously hampers our ability to have any hope to move beyond our current dilemmas.

    • The most critical component of the current campaign is whether you want a criminal or a creative president.
      The Clinton Family has had an interesting run, but like Capone, they aren’t able to whitewash their history, which is now being presented to the public with Arkancide-like precision.
      Trump may be a Fraud, he may me Incompetent, or he may be playing us all, but at least the possibility exists that he’s going to try to fulfill the role of the Executive branch of the US Federal Government.
      I cannot excuse rampant corruption as being a necessary cost of business.

  11. A good article, but doesn’t include that Trump is supported by many intellectuals as well as the working class and, more important, Trump is not a NWO warmonger. He’s willing to dialogue with Russia, is our best prospect for peace.

    Paul Craig Roberts
    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/10/05/washington-leads-the-world-to-war-paul-craig-roberts/

    Washington Leads The World To War — Paul Craig Roberts
    “What does the world think when they see Donald Trump damned because he doesn’t want war with Russia or the American economy moved offshore?”

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  12. He’s wrong. Bush did not cause the economic collapse…. Bill Clinton caused it. First their was the Mortgage Backed Securities Act which Clinton lobbied for and signed into law. These were the toxic assets.
    Secondly, there was the repeal of the Depression era Glass Steagall Act, which kept financial institutions from becoming too big to fail. Clinton told Robert Rubin, his Treasury Sec’y at the time, to lobby Congress to repeal this law at the behest of Sandy Weill, the CEO at the time of, Traveller’s Group. This was done so Citibank and Traveller’s could merge and form the world’s largest supermarket bank. Clinton and Rubin were successful and Rubin was awarded a no-show job at Citigroup to the tune of $15 million a year plus enormous perks.
    These two acts were responsible for the fallout of the financial system. Even Sandy Weill admits it and regrets ever having lobbied for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Weill stated this was the biggest mistake of his career.

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  13. Absolutely stupid article/opinion. The government of this republic was established to do 2 things…provide for the common defense and protect people’s rights. Period. There is no obligation on the part of the government to provide anything. Businesses fail…boo hoo. People make bad choices..too bad. Trump is not a god but he is an erratic psychotic. Voting for him because you despise the alternative rather than withholding your support of the entire corrupt system is a waste of time and energy

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  14. Good piece but notice “populism is evil” meme creeping into the narrative…

    Now who benefits by dividing western nations into warring factions… while they fleece you with 1%er obscene profits while we fight over race, religion, and wealth distribution?

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  15. It’s 2016 and people still don’t understand that all parties have sold out to globalist scum. The only reason I’m not yet convinced Trump is in with the globalists is because the guy has an ego the size of Jupiter. Can Trump fix America? No chance. Can he make things a little better? Maybe, I’m open to surprises.

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  20. Many of the “have nots” were ” haves” under Reagan. They see HRC as a continuation of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama establishment that has eroded freedoms in general and made very few elites enormously more wealthy while many became “have nots” after having been reasonably secure in what they used to believe was a system of some merit regarding hard work. Nobody believes in that anymore (e.g. that hard work is generally rewarded). The platitudes of the current establishment (we fight them over there to keep us safe here, the largest banks are too big to fail, check your white male privilege, stronger together among fellow boot-lickers and sellouts) are void of logic and insult many have-nots with half a brain. They unwittingly identify with the many homeless veterans abused by the establishment politicians. A vote for Trump is a giant KMAG YOYO to the establishment.

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  21. Michael that interview could have been with any number of people in the UK prior to the Brexit vote in the UK. Exactly the same is happening in the UK with the corporate world crushing small businesses, albeit not as extreme as you seem to be getting in the US

    Outside of London and the political elites we knew it was close but most of us knew we would win. When I went into my office in London (I live in Gloucestershire) on the Friday there was shock all round despite my having warned everyone that they were listening to the wrong news, and misreading the public mood. There was even some hostility as the brain cells of the complacent class kicked in for the first time in a very long time.

    When someone calls you a racist, nationalist, xenophobe or any of the other derogatory terms you know they have lost the argument, or more often don’t want to enter any sort of discussion, even at pre school intellectual level.

    We don’t have Capitalism in the West. We have dictatorship with private monopoly. The cornerstone of Capitalism is protection of the individual. That cornerstone was lost a hundred years ago. To day we favour the chosen and punish those pushing for success. We reward failure in the boardroom and punish hard work in the work place.

    Its not just our politics that is a dismal failure, but science is in the same place, corrupted by money and chasing shadows trying to prove predetermined dogma. Climate change being the most obvious one but by no means the only one with medicine close behind.

    The average human being are not as stupid as the average member of the elite so in the end the people will rebel. The EU is feeling this and the US will feel it. The danger for us all is the elites are likely to start a war to try and reset the clock. I hope we are smart enough to ignore them. and our military smart enough to say no.

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  22. the cries of racism come from the left which is the home of institutional racism and low expectations. the smears concerning Trump are just that with no basis in fact or logic, just left wing hate mongers doing what they do best.
    the author is putz who needs a good a** whipping to see his own anger and hate toward ALL those who disagree with him.
    Wanting ones country to be safe and do well and be moral is not an -ism , it is intelligent and logical.

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  23. The article does a decent job of outlining the populist arguments, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of some others. IMHO, the main reason many people are backing Trump is because they absolutely detest people like the writer of this article, who makes a valiant effort to rid himself of his smug superiority and condescension but doesn’t quite make it, or even know how to. This includes the MSM, Hollywood, the educational establishment, the PC crowd, SJWs, and just about anyone on the left. We red state drooling idiots are so very, very tired of those people that we’re supporting Trump just to piss them all off. That’s as much reason and motivation as we need.

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  25. Because of Wall Street’s influence, employers view employees as costs (not as consumers-and that is the tragedy):
    https://www.salon.com/2016/09/02/robot-employees-coming-to-select-lowes-this-fall/
    Robot “employees” coming to select Lowe’s this fall
    Meanwhile:
    “the job with the most workers is that of retail salesperson.”
    http://www.mybudget360.com/top-4-employment-sectors-us-low-wage-top-employment-fields/
    Top 4 largest occupation sectors in the United States all in the low wage service sector paying $10 an hour or less: What does it mean living near the minimum wage?

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