Dem
51
GOP
49
Last week, we had an item about how much we dislike all those "understanding MAGA" pieces, the ones that The New York Times tends to specialize in, in particular. We probably should have been a little more precise, as we only dislike 95% of them. Once in a while, some writer manages to produce a winner. Such is the case with the now widely circulated Politico article from Michael Kruse headlined "Our System Needs to Be Broken, and He Is the Man to Do It."
Instead of doing very cursory commentaries on 4-10 MAGA voters, Kruse decided to approach the piece by zooming in on a single MAGA voter, namely a resident of New Hampshire named Ted Johnson. Johnson is a 22-year veteran of the armed forces who retired as a lieutenant colonel. He has a high-paying job that allows him to work from home. He has a family and owns his home, whose value has increased 25% since Joe Biden became president. In short, he is in no way someone for whom "the system" is not working. And yet, he wants to burn it all down.
Where does Johnson's anger come from? Even he does not really know, to the point that Kruse didn't even bother to ask. Johnson voted twice for Barack Obama, then twice for Donald Trump. He was a Doug Burgum supporter for a while during this cycle, then switched to Nikki Haley before deciding she was phony. At that point, it was back to Trump, because Trump is the only one who can "break the system" and "take care of the average guy."
As you might imagine, Johnson is a loyal Fox viewer; surely at least some (most?) of his wildly oscillating rage comes from that. For example, consider this passage from the story:
Johnson started talking about "Russia-gate" and "Biden's scandals" and Hunter Biden. What, I wondered, did Hunter Biden have to do with Nikki Haley? "She's not going to hold anybody accountable for what they've done," Johnson told me. "People need to be held accountable. That's why you've got to break the system to fix the system," he said. "Because it's a zero-sum game right now. And to be honest with you, the Democrats are genius. They did anything they could do to win and gain power, even if they lie, cheat, steal... What they're doing is they're destroying the country. Who could bring it back?" He answered his own question: "Trump's the only one."
This passage speaks to the same dynamic, while also illustrating that Trump's criminal cases might just be his Achilles heel:
The federal election interference case in Washington? "I don't see it," he said. "There was no insurrection." The porn star hush money case in New York? "Totally ridiculous." The sweeping election interference case in Georgia? "Jury's out on what's going on there." And the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in Florida? It's the one that gives Johnson a modicum of pause. "You don't f--- around with classified material. Whoever advised him he could have that—he should have gave that s--- up," he said. "But he was being the stubborn, arrogant person that he is." And he added, "I didn't like the way the FBI did it. The raid was ridiculous. And that just emboldened me."
The rest of the piece has much more of the same.
Conservative lawyer and Trump hater George Conway read the piece and said that it's the "most illuminating thing I've ever read about Trumpism." He continued:
This New Hampshire GOP voter is angry. But he doesn't really know what he's angry about. He wants to be angry. He does know whom he is angry at—the people who he thinks run the country and who he thinks think themselves better than he. He wants to harm them, even if it harms him, and even if it harms the country—indeed, especially if it harms the country, because he thinks harming the country is the best way to harm the people he wants to harm.
That very much gets at the heart of the matter.
In any event, we thought this was worth passing along because it's a reminder that Trumpism is not easily subjected to classic political analysis. It may be in part about blue-collar discontent or immigration or globalization, but there's also a strong primal, visceral element that Trump has tapped into that it is almost certain that he does not fully understand. And he's done it because, billionaire as he might be, in that specific way, he is one of them. Take a look at the Conway quote, and notice that it also describes Trump himself to a T. That's why he's sui generis, because it's not true of any of the Trump pretenders. They can't fake the rage, even if they try (see DeSantis, Ron), because they don't truly feel it. Trump does. (Z)