And I’m open for business on a fourth theory, or more.
Douthat: First, I would stress that Trump is not terribly popular, and undoubtedly will become less so if the stock market trends down and recession fears mount. He has a commanding position within his party, but even at his apotheosis his approval ratings barely got over 50 percent.
Second, Americans lived through the first Trump term, when sky-is-falling rhetoric was commonplace, but the average American did not experience a crisis until Covid hit. Then, through the Biden term, the media dialed back the crisis rhetoric dramatically, but in reality, inflation soared, the border seemed wide open, the world became much more dangerous, and the president was manifestly incapable of doing his job. So, while you can make a plausible case that this time is different, that Trump is more empowered and therefore more dangerous, you should still expect many Americans to wait for proof of that in their daily lives before they immediately re-embrace his first term’s narrative of crisis.
Brooks: I’d take you back to a 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, “Dirty Harry,” or a 1974 Charles Bronson movie, “Death Wish.” Both of those were produced in a time of social decay, and they’re both about a guy who is willing to break or bend the rules to restore order. To this day, there is a large chunk of Americans who think the system is so broken, we need someone who will break the rules. That’s what’s happening.
Plus, the unfortunate fact is that there is almost always a kernel of truth to Trump & Co.’s assaults. The most noxious thing they have done in my view is eviscerate U.S.A.I.D. Millions will die. But it was true that U.S.A.I.D. was a bureaucratic nightmare. A generation of administrators there tried to fix it. The problem — which the Trumpies don’t understand — is that a lot of the sinecures were established by members of Congress who insisted they not be removed. Trump policies are not 100 percent wrong; they are just overreactions. Destroying an agency rather than fixing what is wrong and saving what is right.
Stephens: Unless you happen to live within a few miles of Capitol Hill, you probably don’t give two figs whether our (sometimes misspent) foreign aid is distributed via a semiautonomous agency called U.S.A.I.D. or directly through the State Department itself. You also probably think it’s no tragedy that government workers should experience the periodic layoffs that the rest of American workers have lived through since forever. The sort of inside-the-Beltway moves that feel like political earthquakes to a certain kind of Washington insider leave Trump voters somewhere between indifferent and pleased.
