Dangerous Charisma

Then on February 27, 2009, the Tea Party grabbed national attention with nationwide protests and rallies whereby protesters dumped tea or tea substitutes into local bodies of water. Evoking the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, whereby dozens of colonists dumped forty-five tons of tea from three East India Company ships into the Boston Harbor, these modern-day protests wanted to urge Congress to repeal the stimulus package. The symbolism of the Boston Tea Party is still vital to numerous Tea Party groups, as seen on one Tea Party website, TeaParty.Org:

Many claim to be the founders of this movement; however, it was the brave souls of the men and women in 1773, known today as the Boston Tea Party, who dared to defy the greatest military might on earth. We are the beneficiaries of their courage. The Tea Party includes those who possess a strong belief in the Judeo-Christian values embedded in our great founding documents. We believe the responsibility of our beloved nation is etched upon the hearts of true Patriots from every race, religion, national origin, and walk of life sharing a common belief in the values which made and keep our beloved nation great. This belief led to the creation of the modern-day Tea Party.2

While those affiliated with the Tea Party movement refer to it as a “grassroots” movement that emerged in the 2000s, the history of the Tea Party goes back much further than 2009. In fact, the Tea Party has been described not as a grassroots movement, but rather as “corporate astroturfing” whereby it is an organization that “appears to be grassroots, but is either funded, created, or conceived by a corporation or industry trade association, political interest group or public relations firm.”³ The first website for the Tea Party was created in 2002 by the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). The CSE, a conservative political group, was founded by Charles and David Koch in 1984. It is discussed by Jeff Nesbit in his book Poison Tea: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP:

CSE was, in effect, a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the United States, with interests in manufacturing, trade, and investments. CSE hoped, and planned, to expand its reach to other funders such as oil, pharmaceutical, and tobacco companies. But at the time, CSE largely survived on the philanthropy and political aims of the Koch brothers, Charles and David, who owned the mammoth private corporation based in Wichita, Kansas, named after this family.⁴

. . . coalition building should proceed along two tracks: a) a grassroots organizational and largely local track; b) and a national, intellectual track within the DC-New York corridor. Ultimately, we are talking about a “movement,” a national effort to change the way people think about government’s (and big business) role in our lives. Any such effort requires an intellectual foundation—a set of theoretical and ideological arguments on its behalf.5

Not only did the tobacco industry support CSE, but also its successor organizations the Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, in an effort to continue trying to oppose smoke-free laws and more importantly tobacco taxes. These two organizations, in particular, were instrumental in providing training and materials for the first main Tea Party activities in February 2009. The AFP and FreedomWorks continued to help local Tea Parties which helped to support “the tobacco companies’ political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws.”⁶

From 2010 to 2012, numerous polls were conducted to help figure out who the average Tea Partyer was and what the Tea Party believed. As described in one article by CBS in 2012, “They’re white. They’re older. And they’re angry.” But what exactly does this mean? And what truth is there to this statement? According to that poll conducted by CBS News, 18% of Americans identified as Tea Party supporters. Of those 18% they found that: 89% were white; 75% were forty-five years old or older; 59% were men; roughly 75% identified as conservative; and 60% identified as always or usually voting Republican. Other notable demographics identified in this poll included a Tea Partyer being more likely to be educated and more likely to attend religious services, with over 61% being Protestant. Another key characteristic was that they described themselves as “angry” over the current political situation, specifically having a high disapproval rate of then current president Barack Obama. However, a majority of those who described themselves as a Tea Party supporter, 78%, had never attended a rally or even visited a Tea Party website.7

In fact, numerous polls have found that most individuals who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters have never attended one of their rallies. A similar poll conducted by Gallup found that many people who considered themselves supporters of the Tea Party had never been to a rally or a local meeting. In addition according to the Gallup poll, there was relatively no difference in age, employment status, and educational background of Tea Party supporters in comparison to the overall U.S. adult population. Where the demographics for Tea Party supporters may differ from overall U.S. adult demographics is in who attends the rallies, as well as the organizers of the group.⁸ Chris Good of The Atlantic found that in speaking with organizers and leaders of local Tea Party groups that many of them were “older, middle-aged and upper-middle-aged, and many of them (certainly a disproportionate amount, compared to the national population) have been small business owners.”⁹ This observation was reiterated in a phone interview he had with Bob Porto, a Tea Party organizer from Arkansas, who stated, “I would say that the majority of them are middle class, and I would say that the majority of them are either established in their career as an employee at a company or that they have had or are a business owner.”¹⁰

A number of these polls have also reported that Tea Party supporters state they care more about economic issues than social issues. While initial Tea Party protests focused on urging Congress to repeal the stimulus package, other issues have gained popularity among Tea Partyers, including a number of social issues. According to constitutional law professor, Elizabeth Price Foley, in her book The Tea Party: Three Principles:

Although there are certainly a wide range of issues important to the Tea Party groups scattered across the country, there appear to be three core principles shared by all of them, which are unique and essential to American identity: (1) limited government—protecting and defending the idea that the federal government possess only those powers enumerated in the Constitution; (2) unapologetic U.S. sovereignty—protecting and defending America’s borders and independent position in the world; and (3) constitutional originalism—interpreting the Constitution in a manner consistent with the meaning ascribed by those who wrote and ratified the text. These three core principles are reflected in a variety of current issues of importance to the Tea Party, including health-care reform, fiscal responsibility, immigration, internationalism, and the war on terror.11

While the Tea Party claims their major focus is on economic issues, social issues have been equally as important to many Tea Party members, which includes abortion and LGBTQ issues.¹² One of the reasons that social issues might play a larger role in the Tea Party than what has been implied by the party is the high rate of evangelical Tea Partyers. Evangelical Tea Partyers have also been referred to as “teavangelicals,” a phrase coined by David Brody in his book The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party Are Taking Back America. According to Mike Huckabee, who wrote the forward to the book: “With the word Teavangelicals, David had coined a term that . . . also explains the unique blend of a biblical worldview with the Tea Party emphasis on conservatism and the Constitution . . . His insights help explain the passion and the principles that have given a voice to millions of Americans . . . The Teavangelicals are not so much traditional Republicans as they are traditional Americans.”¹³

In a 2011 poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump was the favored potential Republican candidate for 2012 by Tea Party supporters at 20%, more than any of his potential Republican rivals. Mike Huckabee was favored by 17% of Republican supporters, while Mitt Romney was at 21%.¹⁴ The day after the release of this poll, Donald Trump stated on the Today show, in reference to the Tea Party, “I’m very proud of some of the ideas they put forth. They want to stop this ridiculous, absolutely killer spending that’s going on. What’s going on in this country—the way we’re spending money like drunken sailors—we are absolutely, I’m telling you, we’re going to destroy our own freedom.”¹⁵ In discussing his popularity in the poll, Trump went on to state, “I think that I connect with people because I happen to be smart, I happen to have a lot of common sense, I happen to know what I’m doing, I built a great company.” And when asked if he considered himself a Tea Partyer, Trump answered, “I think so.”¹⁶

“Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”

—March 23, 2011, on The View¹⁹

“He’s spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue. Millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue. And I’ll tell you what, I brought it up, just routinely, and all of a sudden a lot facts are emerging and I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.”

—March 28, 2011, on Fox News²⁰

“He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ And if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.”

—March 30, 2011, on The Laura Ingraham Show²¹

Trump continued to ramp up these claims, especially in the days following the release of the poll:

“I have people that have been studying this [Obama’s birth certificate] and they cannot believe what they’re finding . . . I would like to have him show his birth certificate, and can I be honest with you, I hope he can. Because if he can’t, if he can’t, if he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility . . . then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics and beyond.”

—April 7, 2011, on the Today show 22

“His grandmother in Kenya said, ‘Oh, no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.’ She’s on tape. I think that tape’s going to be produced fairly soon. Somebody is coming out with a book in two weeks, it will be very interesting.”

—April 7, 2011, on Morning Joe²³

In addition, a few days following the release of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Trump spoke at a Tea Party event in Florida, an event that was part of a series of “Tax Day” protests by Tea Partyers throughout the country. At the speech some Tea Partyers were wearing shirts that said “Draftthedonald.com.”²⁴ The shirts, of which there were roughly a thousand, and the website it promoted, were created by Jerry Hochfelsen. Hochfelsen stated, “We need a businessman. Twenty-five years ago I thought [former Chrysler chairman] Lee Iacocca should have run for president. Today it’s Trump.” During his speech at the event Trump said:

The opportunity to address this group of really hard-working, incredible people is my great honor. Believe me . . . I’ve said on numerous occasions, that countries like China, India, South Korea, Mexico, the OPEC nations, and many others view our leaders as weak and ineffective. And we have repeatedly, unfortunately been taken advantage of to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. We have to take our country back . . . We can’t afford education. We can’t afford to build the roads. And yet we’re in Iraq, Afghanistan, now Libya. How about Libya, isn’t that a beauty? We don’t want to change the regime. We want nothing to do with the regime, but we want them out. I can just imagine our soldiers and pilots—they’re probably saying, “What does he (Obama) mean? He said he’s not going to be involved in the regime change. And then in another speech he says, we want him out. What does it mean?” In the meantime, it’s a total disaster. Because nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. And Gaddafi is winning . . . You can’t have China taking our jobs, taking our money, making our products. And the amazing thing, then they do all of this and then they loan us money and we pay them interest. And what do they do? They manipulate our currency. Now I know how to stop it . . . Businessweek magazine said in a vote of its readers, that Donald Trump was the world’s most competitive businessperson. With Bill Gates being number two and Warren Buffett being number three. Steve Forbes stated that I was one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the history of free trade.25

Overall, the first wave of the Tea Party, specifically their beliefs, were rather predictive of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and his presidency. For instance, Tea Partyers were more likely to see illegal immigration as a problem, in comparison to other Americans, including Republicans. Trump’s campaign, as well as his presidency, has heavily focused on illegal immigration, as witnessed by his rhetoric of “America First” and “Build the Wall.” Tea Partyers were also more likely to doubt the impact of global warming, another issue for Trump, who for years has debated whether or not climate change and global warming is a hoax. In addition, over half of the Tea Party members believed that America’s best years were behind us, a belief that Trump has apparently shared as witnessed by his choice in slogans: “Make America Great Again.” Almost 90% of Tea Partyers also believed Obama had expanded the role of government too much. Since 2014, Trump himself has criticized Obama for his use of the executive power, arguing that Obama over expanded his power (although Trump now as president has signed more executive orders than any president since Johnson). Another politician that both a majority of Tea Partyers and Trump himself viewed unfavorably was John McCain. As discussed in the chapter “The Quintessential Narcissist,” Trump has had a long history of attacking John McCain, even now after McCain’s passing from brain cancer in 2018. Trump’s overall view of America also closely resembled that portrayed by the Tea Party, as discussed by Bryan Gervais and Irwin Morris, who stated:

Trump’s campaign was predicated on a gloomy portrait of life in this country. In his inaugural address, he famously spoke of “American carnage.” This same theme was also present among Tea Party legislators. They were more likely than other House Republicans to describe an America in decline, one in which Americans had experienced losses at the hands of a failing, and even abusive federal government led by President Barack Obama, and one in which even the American way of life was under threat, including from Muslims and undocumented immigrants.26

Despite support from the Tea Party in 2011, reports from during the 2016 Republican primary race and presidential campaign argued that many Tea Party members at that time actually supported Texas senator Ted Cruz over Donald Trump. In a Washington Post article by Elizabeth A. Yates, she states that Tea Partyers did not support Trump because he was not considered to be a conservative and that “many are offended by his demeanor, language, and ego.” Yates goes on to discuss that it was not until after Trump was voted in as the Republican nominee that he received more support from the Tea Party, in an effort to counter the Democrats who “represented creeping socialism that threatened American democracy.”²⁷ Others, like Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times, argued that the rivalry between the campaigns of Donald Trump and “tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz” was threatening to break the Tea Party. One way in which Trump gained popularity with Tea Partyers over other candidates like Cruz was his willingness to go to extremes. Take for instance his stance on immigration. Trump’s rhetoric was also very popular with conservative news sources, like Fox News and Breitbart News.²⁸ However, by November 2016, article headlines by news outlets like Fox News would read, “How the Tea Helped Trump Win the Election.”²⁹ So did the Tea Party support Donald Trump and did they help him to win the presidential election? One of the best ways to examine the real relationship between Donald Trump and the Tea Party is to examine his relationship with Steve Bannon.

It was no accident that Trump’s formal declaration of his candidacy, on June 16, 2015, took the form of a bitter paean to American nationalism that quickly veered into an attack on Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists.” Nor was it a coincidence that one of his first trips as a bona fide presidential candidate was a circus-like visit to the U.S.-Mexican border crossing in Laredo, Texas. Bannon, who established [a] Breitbart Texas bureau in 2013 to focus on immigration, had worked for weeks with sympathetic border agents to help arrange the trip. And while Trump’s remarks were pilloried by the press and by many of his fellow Republicans—(“extraordinarily ugly,” Jeb Bush called them; House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was “sickened” by them)—that wasn’t what registered most with the candidate himself. By the time he left Texas, Trump had rocketed to first place in polls of Republican primary voters.30

Bannon officially joined Trump’s presidential campaign at a crucial time in August 2016 when most people believed Trump was heading for a landslide loss. By this point Trump had already gone through two campaign managers, Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort. While the media and those in Washington viewed Bannon’s appointment as being the nail in the coffin of Trump’s campaign, Bannon fit in perfectly with Trump’s “outsider campaign.”

Following Trump’s inauguration, Bannon was made White House chief strategist. Over the past few months, Bannon’s role within the White House often appeared to be a role of counteracting other members of Trump’s inner circle. Consider, for example, his brief service on the National Security Council, a role White House officials claimed Bannon took in order to counteract Michael Flynn. However, Bannon’s role became increasingly controversial within the White House. Bannon was reportedly a source of tension, coming into conflict with other White House officials, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Bannon was officially dismissed from his position on August 18, 2017.

While very few reports have examined the relationship between the Tea Party and Trump during his presidency, the argument can be made that he still has a large number of supporters among Tea Partyers. In fact, a number of Tea Partyers who did not support Trump as a presidential candidate now support him as president. In a video by NBC News, titled the “Evolution of Anger,” Tea Partyers like Jenny Beth Martin and those from the Tea Party Patriots discuss how they have come to support the president as a “voice of the outsider.”³² On March 4, 2017, over sixty pro–Trump rallies occurred throughout the country. These “Spirit of America” rallies, as they were called, were organized by current and former Tea Party members.33 However, a number of Trump’s policies, have called into question his support among Tea Partyers, including major increases in government spending.³⁴ One Tea Party activist, Jennifer Stefano, discusses in an op-ed in the New York Times some of the accomplishments made by activists during the Obama presidency, but goes on to write: “No one can take those accomplishments away from us, but today, I and many of my fellow accidental activists feel that President Trump and Congress are taking action on spending that is undoing our hard work. President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a victory for Americans . . . Yet when it came to spending, some of the same politicians who championed tax cuts and claimed to be for limiting government caved to Washington’s political culture.”³⁵