I think people are tired of politically correct people, where everything comes out “The sun will rise and be beautiful.” I think people are really tired of politically correct.
Donald Trump1
On Thursday, July 21, 2016, Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States. He did so in a sometimes rambling, sometimes stirring speech that lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. It was the longest party nomination acceptance speech in American history.
It had all the expected fire and bluster. It even included some uncharacteristic humility. In a reference to his support among religious conservatives, Trump wondered aloud if he was worthy. “I would like to thank the evangelical community,” he said, “because, I will tell you what, the support they have given me—and I’m not sure I totally deserve it—has been so amazing.”2
Yet in the more than five thousand words of the speech, there were four that captured a truth that may be at the heart of Trump’s improbable climb to the White House. They were the words, “I am your voice.”
He was speaking of the “ignored, neglected, and abandoned” when he said these words. He had evoked “laid-off factory workers” and “communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals.” He summoned to mind “forgotten men and women of our country” who “no longer have a voice.”
“I am your voice,” he then promised.
He meant, of course, that he would be a champion for the economically oppressed, yet these four words are more far-reaching than he may have intended. The truth is that much of the appeal of Donald Trump is the way he speaks publicly in the same way that millions of Americans do around kitchen tables, at bars, and among their closest friends. Crass, insulting, bullying, sometimes ill-informed, always opinionated, usually prejudiced, Donald Trump is very much the private voice of millions of Americans. This is one of the main reasons for his rise to the presidency.
It is an oddity that scholars will long debate. Throughout his life, Donald Trump breathed only rarified air. He knew great wealth from birth and as an adult was numbered among the global elite. Yet he mastered a common touch. He could comment to reporters with the manner of a New York dockworker before slipping into his limousine with his supermodel wife and returning to the fifty-eight-story Manhattan building that was his home. When he did, street vendors and corner cops cheered him. They heard themselves in him, in his matter-of-fact arrogance and his mafioso-like tone of threat. He was “the people’s billionaire.”
It is the familiarity of his voice that wins him affection far beyond his class and kind. One biographer believes that when the average American listens to Trump, “The way he talks reminds them of the voice inside their own heads—a rich and sometimes dark stew of conversational snippets and memory scraps, random phrases and half-thoughts—and by extension, it somehow seems as if they’re hearing the voice inside his head.”3
Trump is not unlike, then, a guilty pleasure. People often speak in private in ways they would be ashamed to speak in public. They have their bigotries. They have their conceits. They have their stumbling, yet-unformed thoughts that they fully intend to repeat as often as it pleases them. They cite facts they’ve been told aren’t true, but they like the sound of their voice in the retelling and they do not plan to edit themselves anytime soon. Punctuate it all with cussing and the almost meaningless phrases used for emphasis—“Trust me” and “I’m tellin’ ya”—and it all forms into the public speech of Donald Trump. It is a scandal to American media and a call to arms for his political opponents.
“But to his supporters,” contends Gwenda Blair, Trump’s biographer, “it is proof that he is the real deal—not focus grouped, not mediated, not hiding behind a mask of calculation and manipulation. They admire and, in some cases, envy Trump for openly expressing a deepest self that seems to mirror what they think and feel but don’t dare reveal to the world.”4 He is, in brief, refreshing, especially in the wake of the always polished, ever even-toned, never-far-from-a-teleprompter Barack Obama.
What this leads to is a conclusion that horrifies those wearing “Not My President” T-shirts and hoping for impeachment any minute. Donald Trump is not a right-wing alien who has invaded American politics. He is, instead, very typical of what America has become. He is an exemplar, a representation. As Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio has written, “Donald Trump is not a man apart. He is, instead, merely one of us writ large.”5
This will not sit well with members of the media or Trump’s political opponents who prefer to portray him as a barbarian who made it through the gates. He is, instead, a vocal member of the barbarian nation within those gates. Indeed, it could be that, politics aside, what is most significant about Trump is what he reveals of America in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
He has, for example, used foul language in his public speeches more than any presidential candidate or president in recent memory—perhaps worse than in the whole of American history. As fashionable as it is to express offense at his crass, profanity-laden way of talking, Trump is merely typical of his times. Some 74 percent of Americans report hearing profanity regularly and 64 percent admit they use strong language themselves. Two thirds of Americans believe people swear more than they did twenty years ago.6 We live in an age when television commercials, Sunday sermons in church, and even blogs about cooking are likely to include language that not long ago was considered foul. Trump has not tainted American culture by his crass talk. He has merely reflected it.
He has been married three times and has boasted publicly of his infidelity to his wives. This is mentioned often in media reports. Yet, again, it is a behavior in keeping with trends in American society. Between 30 and 60 percent of all married individuals will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriages. The number of men and women who admit to having affairs with co-workers is 36 percent. When women wonder if their partners are having affairs, 85 percent of them are proven right. When men wonder the same, 50 percent are right. Trump is merely a product of his times.7
It is the same with church attendance. Donald Trump wants to be seen as a Christian yet admits to rarely attending church in recent decades. In this, he is at home in American culture. According to the Hartford Institute of Religion Research, while more than 40 percent of Americans say they go to church weekly, only 20 percent of Americans actually do. Some 2.7 million church members fall into inactivity each year. Between 2010 and 2012, half of all US churches did not add any new members. Clearly, fewer Americans are going to church than ever in American history. Donald Trump has joined them.8
He is often accused of misrepresenting facts or outright lying on a regular basis. Perhaps it is true. Yet, if so, he is merely keeping pace with most Americans. A University of Massachusetts study reveals that 60 percent of adults can’t have a ten-minute conversation without lying at least once.9 Americans lie the most to their parents (86 percent), their friends (75 percent), their siblings (73 percent), and their spouses (69 percent).10
Some of Trump’s public statements have been tinged with racial bigotry. It is offensive and inexcusable. It is also a prominent feature of American society. Racial bias appears in nearly every arena of American life. One study reveals that though marijuana use is roughly equal among whites and blacks, blacks are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for the practice.11 An ESPN fan survey reported that black fans esteemed African-American athletes far more highly than white fans. LeBron James was viewed positively by 57 percent of blacks but just 24 percent of whites. Tiger Woods was adored by 48 percent of blacks but only 19 percent of whites. Only Michael Jordan transcended race and was esteemed by both whites and blacks.12 Once again, Donald Trump is a product of his time and his nation’s culture.
None of this is a defense of Trump. Instead, it raises searing questions for those who supported him, pro-Trump clergy in particular. To support Donald Trump without caveat, to extol him as chosen by God without identifying what is morally objectionable in his politics and behavior, is much the same as extolling American culture without expressing any moral reservation.
Donald Trump is merely a man. He cannot be held responsible for the immoral drift of American society. Yet for those who are the guardians of morality and whose role it is to call for stronger character and deeper souls, to support Trump publicly without distinguishing between the virtues and the vices is nearly an act of idolatry.
When Trump declared at the 2016 GOP convention, “I am your voice,” he meant it mainly in an economic sense. Yet he may have inadvertently stated a broader truth. He is a supercharged version of what America has become. He is the average American today written large. Perhaps he is even a cultural GPS for our times.
He once said, “I am the American Dream, supersized version.” Perhaps, once again, he was saying more than he knew.13