Four Things I Like about Donald Trump (that make him beatable)
I. He is revealing
Donald Trump resonates with people because he says what is really on his mind. He says what a lot of people think but don't say. He is ignorant and disgusting, but he is revealing. What he says often reflects a great swath of public sentiment.
Joe Biden insisted that Donald Trump is “not who we are” as Americans. I think the exact opposite is true. Trump could not possibly have had the success he has had without reflecting actual American values to a significant degree.
Like it or not, it’s what a lot of people think. Leftists can’t be intellectual purists. Real revolution requires reckoning with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
II. He is authentic
Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2024. He won the American people over at the precise moment when he should have been refuted for good. He is not successful just because he plays dirty. Despite being the most hated president of the 21st century (with the possible exception of Dick Cheney), tens of millions of people still like him.
I suspect it is partly because of his authenticity. Harris might have had better talking points, but she always delivered them with a pedantic, corporate tone. You could always tell every word had been workshopped and focus-grouped and data-mined. Trump's strength is his inability to even do that. He can hardly focus, let alone consider a focus group.
One thing leftists can learn from Trump's success is that our political leaders have to be genuine. They have to talk to us like actual human beings. They have to stop over-producing their image and sounding like robots.
Mamdani is a good example of someone doing it right. He says his campaign was about affordability, but I think it was deeply about authenticity. The man traveled on foot from one end of the city to the other, speaking to as many people as he could, listening to as many stories as he could. Maybe we would dismiss him as just another fraud, if he weren’t an actual human talking to us in person about how we are struggling.
Mamdani demonstrated self-awareness in a way Cuomo is incapable of understanding. My favorite moment from the primary campaign was when Mamdani posted a video acknowledging his overuse of the word “ultimately.” It might seem like narcissistic nitpicking, but I actually had noticed an overabundance of that word in his vocabulary, and had remarked about it. So I was stunned when I heard him acknowledge it himself.
Anselm’s law of Christology: the leader must be of the people.
Contrast the video of Hillary Clinton failing to get through a subway turnstile with Mamdani’s subway engagement photos. We see in HD now, folks. It’s hard to hide phoniness.
Trump is a lot of things. But he isn’t exactly phony. – I mean, of course he’s phony. He might be the biggest fraud in U.S. history – but still, there is a transparency to him, a sense of, he is exactly who you think he is.
(So it is amazing to me how bad most Americans are at seeing through him.)
III. For a wannabe dictator, he's unusually accommodating
As authoritarian as he tries to be, Trump is still a negotiator and salesman at heart. He compromises. When he sits down and talks to people, he ends up recognizing the necessity of give-and-take. An example of this is his implementation of tariffs. The initial messaging was authoritarian: “This is not a negotiation.” But the day didn’t end before changes were already taking place.
Publicly, Trump wants to possess an aura of omniscience. “Donald Trump was right about everything.” But privately, he caves and defers to other opinions. So he’s flexible.
IV. He doesn't hide his nature
As it concerns himself — his own actions and motivations — Trump prefers to be honest. I don’t mean honest as in, owning the truth about yourself. I mean, he prefers to be candid.
Many times now, Trump has admitted to having broken the law, but his defense is always to turn the issue around and ask, “Wouldn’t you do the same thing? Wouldn’t any reasonable person do what I did?” Trump doesn’t pretend politics is not corrupt. He practices his corruption out in the open.
Trump described the proposition of pursuing a third term by running as Vice President as “too cute.” He doesn’t want to have to find some outlandish loophole if he doesn’t have to. He would rather be direct and do the thing he says he wants to do.
On the one hand, his blatancy has actually been a strength for him, because it has made his regime more effective. The people who could disempower him when he crosses the line are failing to rise to the occasion.
But on the other hand, blatant lawlessness should be a weakness for Trump. By admitting to breaking the law, that should make it easy for his opposition. The fact that top Democrats at present are doing little more than wagging fingers is not just a pitiful show of cowardice, it’s a travesty of lost opportunities.
We’ve got Trump on video and official government documents incriminating himself a hundred times. Are there NO officials anywhere in this nation capable of enforcing the law on a president? Did our founders—the refuters of dictatorship—write in a loophole that makes it impossible to hold criminal presidents accountable?
*
Public opinion can sway on a dime.
Make demands.
Ignore perceived irrelevance.
Exploit every weakness in the enemy.
Captivate people with revolutionary consciousness.
Haven't you read Benjamin?
"Every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."
Jack Holloway
