Trying to get inside the heads and hearts of Trump's most loyal supporters
Everyones loses when we don't talk to 'the other side'
[Beverly Conner makes her own Trump earrings. ‘He never backs down’. Image: Andrew Buncombe]
Want to know something about Donald Trump Jr?
He’s actually rather funny and good at making people laugh with a well-delivered joke.
Want to know something else? He’s pretty effective at dealing with the media and ready to take on any question you throw at him.
Some people may already know all this. I certainly did not.
And my interactions were admittedly limited to two so-called press “gaggles” after campaign events in South Carolina where he was trying to make the case to the public and the media on behalf of his father. It was not in his interest to do anything other than come across well.
It feels an important thing to say, nevertheless, especially in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, when Nikki Haley suspended her campaign, and America is set for a rematch between Trump’s father and Joe Biden that as many as 70 per cent of people say they not want.
The coming eight months will be the longest general election US history. It is also likely to be one of the dirtiest, with candidates hurling accusations back and forth in a fight over the small slice of voters who have not made their minds up about the two candidates.
Many of those voters - so called “double haters” - will be deciding not so much which candidate they prefer, but which of them they dislike the most.
It is ever more incumbent upon the media to try and report on the two candidates and their supporters with accuracy, rigour and empathy, while also pointing out when someone says racist or debased things, or when a candidate’s age becomes part of a national conversation.
Too many on both sides are ready to demonise the other without even hearing them out.
[Trump supporter Larry Melcher claims Republicans have gone ‘soft’. Image: Andrew Buncombe]
I love covering US elections.
As I tell people when I show up at events, whether for Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren or Vivek Ramaswamy, I do not get to vote here (quite rightly) and don’t really have a dog in the race. Obviously, I care about what happens to the place I call home these days.
At these events, I am interested in hearing what has led a person to show up at a school gymnasium, or church hall or convention centre and listen to what the candidate has to say.
What is it that appeals to them about the candidate they’re here to listen to? What issues matter to them? Why do they think this person is going to be able to help them?
For me, I am especially interested in hearing from the MAGA-types. I encounter plenty of liberal opinions here in Seattle, but the Trump supporters are less obvious.
I want to know what they find so beguiling about the 77-year-old Trump, less than four years younger than Biden.
I want them to explain the apparent inconsistency of millions of working-class Americans somehow finding as an ally, a billionaire former celebrity TV star who flies in on his own plane.
And almost without exception, people are willing to share their thoughts and ideas as to why this businessman with a poor record in industry who now faces dozens of criminal charges is a saviour, or at the very least has their backs.
And while some of the people I listen to may have, in my view, beliefs that are bigoted or racist, that is frequently not the case.
Many people are very often misinformed and believe the 2020 election was rigged, but oftentimes they are clear-eyed.
Almost every time one of these people sets out their case for supporting Trump it seems to me that it makes complete sense to them. They’re not simply “crazy” or “deplorable” as we often hear.
When I was in South Carolina covering the primary election that Haley lost by 20 points, I heard Trump Jr was holding two events on the Friday before voting day. I signed up for both of them.
“I saw Nikki Haley on with someone yesterday. She was trying to convince them she had won a state and I'm like…” Trump Jr said, hopping onto the stage at an event at the The Military College of South Carolina in Charleston.
Pausing for comic effect, he added: “I'm trying to figure out which one. It's almost as deluded as Joe Biden himself. But I guess when you're working for the Democrats, like Nikki Haley is right now, it doesn't really matter.”
People laughed and clapped.
[Donald Trump Jr has become a loyal surrogate for his father - conspiracies and disinformation included. Image: Andrew Buncombe]
They chuckled when he said it was quite a measure of the struggling economy, when he, the “son of a billionaire” went into a store and suffered “sticker shock”.
He said it must be really bad for someone making $50,000. My head was yelling “How can you try and equate yourself to ordinary voters”, but people in the crowd listened attentively. It appeared some almost felt sorry for him.
Trump Jr’s talent, and that of his father, is that in the moments like these, he is there with them, he is one of them. He is wearing their jersey.
The concerns people raise are in line with national polls - the level of illegal immigration and the economy. They all believe the various criminal cases against Trump are part of a “witch-hunt”.
It is important to push back as a reporter in some of these instances. I’ll ask where is the evidence the election was stolen, or how did Marjorie Taylor Greene manage to get elected if the system was rigged. I will ask why the man they are supporting is using racist language not dissimilar to that used by the Nazis.
Yet I am not there to fight or try and engage in a drawn out argument I have no chance of winning. I want to know what they think.
Supporters such as a 62-year-old woman who liked the fact Trump in her view is “not a politician”. Democrats are soft on the border and things were better under Trump.
Annette Begner, 51, was among those who is certain the 2020 election was rigged.
“I know there was ballot harvesting,” she said.
A 70-year-old woman called Beverly Conner was wearing the Donald Trump ear rings she is wearing, and which sells online.
“He never backs down, he doesn't get his feelings hurt, and he does exactly what he knows is right even when everything in the whole wide world is against him,” she enthused about the former president.
Later, at an event at the Trump Campaign headquarters near Charleston airport, another Trump loyalist, Lenny Melcher, explained why he was prepared to put up with the crush of a hot crowded room and wait for Trump Jr.
The retired mechanical engineer said he always voted for the Republican Party but that it had “gone soft”. He said he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and would do so again. He denounced the multiple criminal and civil trials the former president is facing as an organised attempt to stop him from winning again.
“With all the bull***t he has to put with from Democrats over all these years, the least I can do is show up and support him for two hours,” he said.
When Trump Jr spoke with the media afterwards, he took all questions - about the recent $450m judgment against his father, himself and his brother in New York, the threat of Nikki Haley - she should drop out - and whether he thought the US had destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline. “Yes.”
I asked how, given his father’s recent comments that’d he told a NATO ally he’d encourage Russia to invade if it had not spent enough on defense, Europe could trust America to be a reliable ally.
“I think America is a reliable partner if Europeans are reliable allies,” he said. “He did this the first time with NATO [and people said] ‘Oh my God he threatened NATO’. No, he just wanted to make sure that everyone contributed what they agreed to in paper, and that would made NATO stronger.”
The lesson of this - especially as the election approaches - is to talk to people and hear what they have to say.
You may not agree with them, but it is better to try and understand than to demonise. Always.