1. Introduction: An Ethos on Full Display

Donald Trump’s rise to the U.S. presidency was not marked by stealth or subtlety. From the outset of his public life in politics, Trump flaunted a blatant lack of policy depth, decency, respect for laws, and knowledge. He made no effort to conceal his character flaws or autocratic impulses. Yet he was elected president twice (in 2016 and 2024) – a fact that demands an unflinching look at why millions of Americans willingly embraced Trump’s openly cruel and ignorant ethos. Far from being hoodwinked or dragged along, a significant segment of the American public saw Trump’s worst qualities as features, not bugs, and chose him because of those qualities, not in spite of them. In a liberal democracy that prides itself on values of equality and justice, Trump’s elections stand as an indictment of the electorate as much as the man himself. This essay argues polemically that Trump’s creed of cruelty, retribution, ignorance, and authoritarianism was actively chosen by American voters – a choice that holds both the leader and his followers morally accountable for the degradation of our politics.

Trump never masked who he was. On the contrary, he trafficked in outrage and transgression as his brand. His 2016 campaign was a spectacle of norm-breaking behavior: he mocked a disabled reporter on camera, led angry chants to “lock up” his opponent, casually encouraged violence at his rallies, and infamously bragged about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape – all in the public eye. He thumbed his nose at basic decency and boasted about it. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he crowed, taking pride in behavior that would end most political careers. Likewise, Trump displayed a startling ignorance on policy and governing details, yet wore it as a badge of honesty, claiming he knew more than any expert and didn’t need preparation. At a 2016 rally he gushed, “We won with highly educated, we won with poorly educated – I love the poorly educated!”, openly celebrating the anti-intellectual strain of his movement. Such remarks signaled that knowledge and expertise would be scorned in favor of gut instinct and tribal loyalty. Trump even joked that his base was so loyal he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing support. It was a crude exaggeration, but one that history would prove eerily accurate – a prophecy of unconditional support that held true no matter what he did. In short, Trump never hid his contempt for norms or his delight in flouting them, and his supporters cheered him for it, forming a political cult around his persona.

When he assumed office, Trump continued to govern with the same brazenness. He had no cohesive policy agenda beyond self-interest and resentment. In 2020, the Republican Party didn’t even bother writing a new platform, instead simply resolving that their “true priority is supporting Donald Trump”. This unprecedented abdication of policy-making was a tacit admission that Trump was the platform – his whims and grievances replaced any traditional party principles. From health care to foreign affairs, Trump’s approach was capricious and shallow. (He often changed positions mid-sentence and admitted complex issues were “so complicated” after claiming he alone could fix them.) A revolving door of advisers reported that Trump refused briefings, ignored facts, and acted on impulse. His first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, allegedly called him a “moron” for his profound lack of understanding. Generals and diplomats were aghast at how little Trump knew or cared about policy, but Trump never pretended otherwise. He reveled in being an anti-establishment wrecking ball rather than a careful statesman. Any suggestion of ignorance or lawlessness only fueled his “tell it like it is” appeal, as his base took his very crudeness as proof of authenticity.

By examining Trump’s campaigns, presidency, impeachments, the January 6th insurrection, and his post-presidency resurrection, we see a through-line: Trump’s most disqualifying traits were not hidden from the public – they were performed center stage. That he prevailed politically speaks volumes about the American electorate’s appetite for what he was offering. This essay will document Trump’s open flouting of decency and law, and show how large swaths of voters actively approved of or at least tolerated this behavior. It will engage with counterarguments – were these voters merely economically anxious, misled, or reluctantly compromising? – and explain why those excuses ring hollow. In the end, the conclusion is grim: Trump’s success reflects a deliberate choice by millions of Americans to embrace an ethos of cruelty and authoritarianism, implicating the public in the moral decay of our democracy.

No Apologies: Trump’s Open Contempt for Decency and Law

From the very beginning of his political career, Donald Trump showed the world exactly who he was, with no apologies or subtlety. His lack of conventional political polish was often touted as refreshing honesty, but what Trump was honest about were his ugliest impulses. He made no effort to hide his indecency, ignorance, or lawlessness – in fact, he flaunted these qualities, turning them into rallying cries.

Consider Trump’s 2015-2016 campaign, which broke every rule of civility. He launched his candidacy with nativist bile, calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and criminals, and proposing a blanket ban on Muslims entering the country. These were shockingly blunt appeals to prejudice. Far from walking such remarks back, Trump doubled down, basking in the outrage of critics and the adulation of crowds who roared their approval. When confronted about his lies or inflammatory comments, he bulldozed ahead without shame. In a primary debate, he even insulted the appearance of a rival candidate’s wife and spread deranged conspiracy theories about his opponents’ families – behavior unimaginable for any previous contender for president. Basic decency was treated as weakness in Trump’s playbook; cruelty was strength. At rallies, he encouraged violence against protesters, urging supporters to “knock the crap out of them” and promising to pay legal fees for any trouble caused. He led chants to imprison Hillary Clinton (“Lock her up!”) before any charge or trial – a mob mentality directly at odds with the rule of law. And of course, who can forget Trump mockingly flailing his arms to taunt a disabled New York Times reporter, to the gleeful laughter of his audience? This act of cruelty, which would have ended another candidate’s bid in disgrace, only seemed to enhance Trump’s appeal as an iconoclast willing to target the “weak” and marginalized.

Trump’s entire persona was built on transgressive bravado. He openly bragged about behavior that ought to have been disqualifying. The infamous Access Hollywood tape, which surfaced in October 2016, captured Trump crudely boasting about grabbing women’s genitals without consent – “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” he smirked. It was a public relations nightmare that would have sunk any other politician. Trump’s response? A non-apology in which he dismissed the remarks as “locker-room talk,” then brought women who had accused Bill Clinton of misconduct to a press conference in a brazen display of deflection. Trump made clear he felt answerable to no moral standard. His lack of remorse or self-censorship was the point – he was selling himself as the candidate unbound by “political correctness” or basic manners. And crucially, enough voters loved him for it. Exit polls and rallies showed that many supporters admired Trump’s “telling it like it is” attitude. In reality, what Trump told was often lies or cruel insults – but for his fans, the very act of breaching etiquette was seen as a truth-telling rebellion against elites. The fact that he did not hide his worst traits became evidence of “authenticity.”

Beyond indecency, Trump also flouted knowledge and expertise at every turn. He proudly declared that he knew more than generals about ISIS, more than economists about trade, more than scientists about climate change. These claims were absurd, but Trump’s ignorance was not concealed – it was performed. He rarely delved into policy specifics in speeches, instead meandering through self-congratulation, personal anecdotes, and attacks on enemies. On complex issues like healthcare, he confessed “nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” exposing his own lack of preparation, yet framing it as a discovery. During intelligence briefings, advisors noted Trump’s eyes would glaze over; he preferred watching cable TV and firing off tweets to reading briefing books. The mechanics of governing bored him, so he governed by gut instinct and impulse. For instance, rather than develop a serious plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump just kept promising a “beautiful health plan” that never materialized. He seemed not to care that he had no real policy – and indeed his base didn’t mind either. In 2020, the Republican Party’s decision not to adopt a new platform but simply to pledge loyalty to Trump underscored that the movement wasn’t about policies or ideas, but about the man. The party stated plainly that its agenda was whatever Trump said; in effect, personalism replaced policy. This extraordinary move confirmed that Trump hadn’t bothered to articulate a second-term vision – and that his party and voters didn’t require one.

Perhaps most alarming was Trump’s overt disrespect for the rule of law and democratic norms. He consistently acted as if he were above the law and publicly tested the limits of legal and constitutional boundaries. Early in the 2016 campaign, he joked about executing people on Fifth Avenue with impunity, but as president he took real steps in that direction of unaccountability. Trump demanded personal loyalty from law enforcement chiefs, firing FBI Director James Comey after Comey refused to drop an investigation of Trump’s associate – an act of blatant obstruction of justice that Trump openly justified on national TV. He pardoned political allies who were convicted of crimes, sending the message that loyalty to Trump outweighed loyalty to law. In policy, his administration set about breaking laws or violating rights as a matter of course: from defying congressional subpoenas, to diverting congressionally appropriated funds for his border wall, to implementing a cruel family separation policy at the border that tore children from parents in violation of basic human rights. Significantly, Trump never tempered or hid his authoritarian tendencies. When white nationalists terrorized Charlottesville in 2017 and an counterprotester was murdered, Trump insisted there were “very fine people on both sides,” equivocated on condemning Nazis, and thereby signaled to the country that violent bigotry would get a pass. During the first impeachment, over his scheme to extort Ukraine into smearing a political rival, Trump blocked witnesses and documents from Congress in open defiance, declaring that Article II of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want” as president. This was an extraordinary statement of lawlessness – a president claiming essentially unlimited power – and he said it on camera. Time and again, Trump broadcasts his belief that rules did not apply to him. In 2020, as he faced reelection, he openly stated that if he lost it would mean the election was “rigged” – priming his supporters to reject any result not showing a Trump victory. Never in modern American history had a major party candidate so openly refused the fundamental principle of democratic transfer of power.

The pattern is clear: Donald Trump never disguised his indecency or his autocratic impulses. He modeled them in plain view. His cruelty was performative and intentional, his disregard for law brazen. As one observer noted at the time, Trump and those around him treated malice as a virtue: “Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain”. Indeed, Trump’s presidency became a constant stream of malicious rhetoric and policies, from praising police brutality to slandering entire minority groups. Any pretense of presidential decorum was utterly absent – not by accident, but by Trump’s design.

By normal measures of character and competence, Trump was the most unfit president in memory, and he advertised that unfitness daily. Yet tens of millions of Americans saw exactly what he was – and they voted for him anyway, even enthusiastically. This raises the central question: What did Trump’s supporters see in this naked display of cruelty and ignorance? The next sections will argue that, rather than holding their noses or being duped, a large share of Trump’s voters actively liked or accepted these traits. Trump did not impose his ethos on an unwilling nation – a large part of the nation not only cheered it on, but openly loved those ethos.

The Allure of Cruelty: “He Says What We’re All Thinking”

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Trump era is how cruelty became a bonding mechanism between the president and his followers. Trump’s brazen contempt for others wasn’t a hidden secret – it was the centerpiece of his appeal. His supporters often claimed to admire his “toughness” and refusal to be politically correct. In practice, this meant they enjoyed the way Trump inflicted verbal and policy violence on groups they also despised or feared. As Atlantic writer Adam Serwer famously observed, under Trump “the cruelty is the point.” In Trump’s movement, shared cruelty functioned as a form of camaraderie: “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear,” Serwer wrote, noting that their “shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.” This chilling observation was borne out repeatedly during Trump’s campaigns and presidency.

Trump’s rallies became the theaters of cruelty par excellence. In these carnivalesque gatherings, crowds ecstatically responded to Trump’s mean-spirited jokes and vindictive tirades. When Trump mocked the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford – who had alleged a sexual assault by Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh – at an October 2018 rally, the crowd of Trump supporters roared with laughter and approval. They were delighting in the humiliation of a woman bravely speaking about her trauma. “Lock her up!” they chanted about Ford, mirroring the call Trump had long led against Hillary Clinton. It was a moment that revealed how Trump’s followers relished cruelty when it was directed at those they considered enemies or outsiders. Similarly, Trump drew cheers by ridiculing political opponents with demeaning nicknames (“Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Little Marco”) and by lampooning refugees, immigrants, and anyone not in their tribe. The more outrageous his insults, the more his base laughed and applauded. This was not begrudging acceptance of an otherwise disliked trait – it was the raw joy of the mob, reveling in shared hate.

Beyond rhetoric, Trump’s policies themselves were often deliberately cruel, and this too seemed to resonate with a significant portion of the American public. One of the starkest examples was the family separation policy instituted in 2018, where migrant children were taken from their parents at the southern border as a “deterrent.” Heartbreaking images emerged of toddlers crying in cages, but rather than provoking universal condemnation, many Trump supporters defended the practice. In fact, some officials involved appeared to take perverse glee in the suffering: Border Patrol agents were heard “cracking up at the crying immigrant children” separated from their families, according to reports. A Trump adviser (Stephen Miller, widely seen as the architect of the child separation policy) delighted white supremacists by mocking a child with Down syndrome who had been separated from her mother. These acts were not hidden – they were reported in the press and implicitly condoned by the administration. Rather than apologizing, Trump officials justified the cruelty as necessary. And the base stood by, largely unmoved by the moral horror. The pain of “others” was considered acceptable, even enjoyable, to many in the MAGA camp, as long as it served their vision of security or national greatness. As Serwer noted, “the Trump era is a whirlwind of cruelty” where policy and rhetoric merge to inflict harm, and “it is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him”. In other words, Trump’s followers weren’t innocent bystanders to his malice – they were participants who found affirmation and glee in it.

This phenomenon – a political movement united by shared cruelty – is a dark mirror to more noble forms of social bonding. Psychologically, it gave Trump’s supporters a sense of tribal belonging: by laughing together at the out-groups’ distress, they reinforced their in-group solidarity. Trump himself seemed aware of this dynamic. He often said his rallies were “love fests,” but the love was conditional, reserved only for those on Trump’s side. Toward everyone else, the message was hate and punishment. One observer pointed out that “What mattered was hating the right people” in Trump’s politics. The MAGA crowd indeed often defined themselves by who their enemies were – immigrants, minorities, “liberal elites,” the media, Muslims, etc. Trump gave them permission to openly jeer and wish harm upon those groups. This permission was intoxicating for those who felt politically repressed by “political correctness” or changing social norms. At Trump’s rallies, it was not only permitted but encouraged to be openly racist, misogynistic, or violent in one’s fantasies. The cruelty was the feature that made Trumpism feel liberating to them. It provided an emotional release – a chance to say, essentially, “Yes, I too want to see those people suffer or put in their place.”

Crucially, Trump’s cruelty was inseparable from his promises of retribution. He presented himself as an avenger who would strike back at the people his supporters hated. In a chilling declaration at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump escalated his rhetoric of vengeance: “I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” The crowd erupted in ecstasy at these words. Here was Trump explicitly casting himself as a vehicle of payback. This wasn’t dog-whistling; it was a foghorn. Trump was saying that if returned to power, he would punish and “obliterate” his enemies – from the “deep state” to political opponents – on behalf of his followers. The fact that such a menacing, authoritarian promise could be a cheer line at a mainstream political conference shows how far the appetite for cruelty along Americans had gone. Vengeance had become a primary selling point. Trump was effectively telling voters: elect me and I will hurt the people you want hurt. Rather than recoil, his base chanted “USA! USA!” in response, as if retribution against domestic foes was patriotic. This moment encapsulates the thesis: Trump’s ethos of cruelty and retribution wasn’t imposed; it was demanded by his supporters. They wanted a leader who would be merciless to their adversaries.

Evidence abounds that Trump’s supporters found validation and even joy in his ignorance and bigotry. For some, his crude remarks were entertaining – a form of trolling the liberals and media that gave them vicarious thrill. “Owning the libs” became a policy in itself, more important than any concrete agenda. Negative emotions like rage and resentment were constantly stirred up by Trump and his media allies, to the point that “transgressive behaviors became chic” among his base. The more offensive Trump was, the more it proved to them he was fighting the hated “establishment.” Reveling in his cruelty was a way for them to feel powerful too, as part of a mass that could defy polite society. As Peter Wehner wrote, many Republicans initially saw Trump’s outrageous behavior as a bug, “eventually, they became a feature. Republicans ignored his corruptions and reveled in his cruelty. They entered Trump’s hall of mirrors, and they rather enjoyed it.” The progression here is important: even those who might have once had qualms eventually got acclimated and came to enjoy the very things they were uneasy about. Trump normalized cruelty so effectively within his coalition and the GOP that it became socially rewarding to be as cruel as him.

The idea that Americans actively chose cruelty might sound hyperbolic, but consider the concrete reality: under Trump, policies that objectively caused suffering (family separations, Muslim travel ban, dismantling protections for transgender people, shrugging off a pandemic’s mass death, etc.) were either popular or tolerated among his voters. For instance, even when COVID-19 began killing thousands of Americans a day, Trump’s concern was often on downplaying the crisis and mocking preventative measures. He politicized masks and public health, turning caring for others into a partisan joke. Many of his followers followed suit, showing indifference or hostility toward the vulnerable. The cruelty was not always as explicit as laughing at a child in a cage; sometimes it was the coldness of not caring if others suffered, as long as one’s own tribe wasn’t affected. Trump provided a moral cover for this callousness by constantly telling his base that outsiders deserved it – immigrants deserved harsh treatment for coming illegally, blue states deserved more COVID casualties for opposing him, etc. The cumulative effect was a desensitization to cruelty and an endorsement of it as governance. A political scientist studying the period might note that appeals to authoritarian aggression – punishing out-groups and dissenters – had unprecedented success in an American election. Indeed, academic studies found that racial and cultural resentments were stronger motivators for Trump voters than any economic concern. Trump’s loud bigotry was not a dealbreaker; it was often a selling point. Surveys after 2016 revealed that “numerous studies found support for Trump is closely linked to racial resentment”, and that these prejudices were “at the core of his political success.” White voters with more resentment toward minorities were significantly more likely to vote Trump – a sign that many liked his divisive rhetoric on race or at least felt it spoke to their fears. Far from being misled, these voters heard Trump’s message loud and clear: he would restore a social order with white, straight, Christian men on top (as Serwer noted, Trump’s fundamental belief was that America “is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men”). And they approved.

In sum, the evidence is overwhelming that Trump’s ethos of cruelty resonated deeply with a large segment of Americans. Whether through active enjoyment or a hardened indifference, tens of millions were not turned off by his spiteful behavior; many were energized by it. Trump offered permission to be one’s worst self under cover of political incorrectness and strength. He offered supporters “an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life” in the form of a community bound by shared scorn. It is a grim kind of unity, but a potent one: unity through a common enemy and the collective thrill of transgression. Thus, the ugliness of Trump’s public persona was a reflection of the ugliness within segments of the American public itself. They chose him because, in some way, he reflected their own resentments and desires for dominance.

Twice Chosen: Elections as Moral Choices, Not Mistakes

Donald Trump’s eventual electoral victories – winning the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024 – force us to confront a hard truth: the American people (or at least a significant plurality of them) knowingly chose a leader defined by cruelty, ignorance, and lawlessness. These elections cannot be dismissed as accidents or purely the result of misinformation. They were decisions, made in the face of ample evidence about Trump’s character. Especially by the time of the 2024 election, Americans had seen the full arc of Trump’s first term, including two impeachments and a violent insurrection, and still nearly half of voters cast their ballots for him. Any attempt to exonerate the electorate – to claim they didn’t know what they were getting – rings hollow. They knew, and they chose him anyway. And, I am not sorry to say, they got what they deserve, including gutting social security, cutting Medicaid, sacking hundreds of thousands of federal workers, canceling DEI, gutting USAID, USIP, and creating Musk-led DOGE. ONCE AGAIN, I AM NOT SORRY TO SAY IT: AMERICANS DESERVE WHAT THEY GOT. 

In 2016, one might argue, Trump was an unknown quantity in governance, a political novice whose outrageous campaign might not translate to actual presidency. Even then, however, his base’s fervor indicated something deeper than policy agreement. His supporters often said they “took him seriously but not literally”, suggesting they didn’t necessarily believe every wild promise but liked his general attitude. That attitude – brash, cruel, vengeful – was exactly what many wanted. Voters who felt left behind or aggrieved by social changes saw in Trump a champion who would make the “right people” hurt. He turned out big numbers particularly among whites without college degrees, who responded to his racial and cultural appeals. Analyses after 2016 showed that factors like racial resentment and sexism were strong predictors of support for Trump, stronger than economic hardship. In blunt terms, many Trump voters were motivated by a desire to reassert dominant cultural hierarchies that they perceived to be threatened. Trump’s very public lack of decorum was a feature to them because it signaled he was no ordinary politician – he was their fighter. Indeed, Trump’s now infamous line “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” was a boast about the loyalty of his supporters, but it also implied those supporters had essentially signed a blank moral check to him. They did not care about hypothetical crimes; they cared that Trump was their guy, representing their grievances. And Election Day 2016 proved him right to a stunning degree.

By the end of Trump’s first term, Americans no longer had the excuse of uncertainty. They had four years of concrete evidence of how Trump governed: amidst chaos, cruelty, corruption, and constant lies. They witnessed him separating families, giving cover to white supremacists, attempting to pressure a foreign nation for personal political gain (the Ukraine scandal), and finally trying to subvert the 2020 election itself when he lost. The year 2020 was particularly revealing. The COVID-19 pandemic struck, and Trump’s response was to downplay the virus, undermine scientists, and turn public health into a battlefield of partisan division. Over 400,000 Americans died on his watch, a toll exacerbated by his administration’s incompetence and willful denial. He also stoked unrest in the streets during racial justice protests, threatening to unleash “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” on demonstrators, and deploying federal forces against protesters in Washington, D.C. Still, in November 2020, 74 million Americans voted to re-elect him. He lost the election (garnering 46.8% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 51.3%), but the fact that nearly half the electorate after all that turmoil wanted four more years of Trump is telling. Those voters saw his bungling of a pandemic, saw his overt racism and division, saw his open contempt for the Constitution – and still said, yes, please continue.

One might argue some were simply partisan Republicans voting for their team or for specific policies (like anti-abortion judges or tax cuts). No doubt some held their noses. But polls of Trump voters even in 2020 showed overwhelming approval of him among Republicans – upwards of 90% approval within the party. This was not a grudging acceptance; it was enthusiastic support. In fact, post-election, when Trump lied about the results and refused to concede, the vast majority of Republican voters either believed him or at least supported his refusal to accept defeat. Within weeks of the election, Trump’s base became inflamed with conspiracy theories of a stolen vote. It culminated on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters – explicitly summoned by him to Washington with the promise that it would be “wild” – stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election by force. This was an event unprecedented in modern American history: an insurrection fueled by the President’s lies and encouragement. In the immediate aftermath, there was a moment of shock and a dip in Trump’s approval. Some Republican lawmakers even muttered about breaking from him. But that moment was fleeting. In February 2021, all but 7 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial for inciting the insurrection, despite the clearly visible evidence. And in the months and years after Jan. 6, the Republican base largely rallied around an alternate narrative – that the rioters were patriots or that the attack was exaggerated or instigated by Trump’s enemies. Astoundingly, by January 2024, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found Republican voters’ sympathy for the rioters had actually grown, not shrunk, since the week of the attack. “Three years after Jan. 6, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021,” reported the Post. GOP voters had doubled down on their support: they were less inclined to see Jan. 6 rioters as violent criminals and less likely to believe Biden’s win was legitimate than shortly after the attack. In follow-up interviews, some even embraced bizarre conspiracy theories that Jan. 6 was a false-flag operation by law enforcement or the left – anything to keep their loyalty to Trump intact.

What this shows is that Trump’s base not only tolerated his assault on democracy, many actively supported it or excused it. The survival of the “Big Lie” (that the 2020 election was stolen) as a core belief among Republicans is indicative of an authoritarian mindset among millions of voters. Rather than accept a loss, they chose to believe an evidence-free fabrication that justifies reversing the outcome. In state after state, polls found a majority of Republicans believed Trump’s lie. A Reuters-Ipsos poll in 2021, for example, found that over half of Republicans falsely believed Trump won and that the election was stolen by illegal voting. These beliefs aren’t just passive; they translate into support for extreme actions. Many Trump voters said they viewed Jan. 6 not as a violent riot but as a righteous protest, and they opposed prosecuting the participants. By 2022 and 2023, Republican candidates running on explicit pro-insurrection or election-denial platforms were winning GOP primaries, cheered on by base voters who wanted them to “stop the steal.” In short, the rank-and-file Republican electorate — which is largely synonymous with Trump’s base — showed itself comfortable with overturning democratic norms to keep Trump (or his acolytes) in power.

When Trump decided to run again for president in 2024, facing multiple criminal indictments and with the stigma of Jan. 6 hanging over him, one might have expected his support to wither. Instead, he remained the dominant frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Rally crowds still came out in droves. A poll in late 2023 showed over 60% of Republican voters said they would vote for Trump even if he were convicted of a felony. This is cult-like loyalty. The facts of Trump’s presidency and aftermath were well known, but they had been reframed in the minds of his supporters as badges of honor. They saw him as persecuted by the establishment for fighting for them. Trump leaned heavily into this narrative, promising that his re-election would bring retribution and a cleansing of the government from “traitors.” And they loved it. As one conservative writer lamented, “The base doesn’t just forgive Trump’s sins; it demands them as proof he is on their side.” Trump’s behavior had become proof of concept – evidence that he was delivering the chaos and punishment many Americans craved.

Thus, Trump’s election and re-election (in the sense of again winning the presidency in 2024) stand as testaments to the fact that his values resonated with a huge portion of Americans. It was not a small fringe that twice put him into the White House; it was tens of millions of citizens. To call Trump a fluke or an aberration is to engage in denial. As Elie Mystal put it starkly after the 2024 election, “There’s no denying it anymore: Trump is not a fluke — he’s America. The United States chose Donald Trump in all his ugliness and cruelty, and the country will get what it deserves.” This brutal assessment assigns collective responsibility. Mystal continues, “America did this… America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants”. The point is not that every individual American wanted this, but that enough did that as a nation we must own the outcome. Trump’s governance was an accurate reflection of the worst currents in American society: racism, authoritarianism, vengeance, ignorance. He held up a mirror, and a great many Americans saw themselves and liked what they saw. When he won in 2024, Mystal wrote, “we, as a country, have proven ourselves to be a fetid, violent people, and we deserve a leader who embodies the worst of us. We are not ‘better’ than Trump… He is, and always has been, a mirror. He is how America sees itself.”. This is a deeply unsettling claim – that Trump mirrors the American soul – but the electoral evidence gives it weight. Trump understood the dark desires of a large segment of Americans and he played to them shamelessly. In return, those voters elevated him to the highest office twice. The rest of the country, and the world, must contend with the reality that the beacon of democracy chose as its leader a man who openly disdains democracy and decency.

Counterarguments: Myths of the Misled and the Reluctant

Defenders or apologists for Trump’s voters have offered a variety of explanations over the years to soften the implications of his support. We often hear that Trump’s voters were economically anxious, or that they were duped by misinformation, or that they held their noses for the sake of other goals like judicial appointments, deregulation, or party loyalty. While there are kernels of truth in some of these narratives, none of them exonerate Trump’s voters from responsibility. In fact, these arguments tend to collapse under scrutiny of both data and behavior. Let us examine a few of the common counterarguments and see why they fail to absolve the electorate of choosing cruelty and ignorance.

1. “It was economic anxiety and despair that drove Trump’s rise – not bigotry or malice.” This argument was popular immediately after 2016, painting Trump’s base as down-on-their-luck blue-collar workers lashing out at a system that left them behind. It is true that Trump tapped into regions hurt by deindustrialization, and he spoke (unconvincingly) about bringing back jobs, blaming globalization and bad trade deals. However, numerous studies have since debunked the idea that economic hardship was the primary factor for most Trump voters. For instance, research by political scientists cited in The Washington Post and Vox found that economic status was not a strong predictor of Trump support once racial attitudes were accounted for. Trump voters in 2016 were, on average, slightly better off than Clinton voters in terms of income. One large survey of white voters showed racial resentment was the top differentiator between Trump and non-Trump voters, not income or job status. Even among the white working class, those who voted for Trump were more motivated by feelings of cultural threat (e.g., immigration, racial diversity, changing social norms) than by their personal finances. The narrative of the disgruntled factory worker doesn’t explain the hordes of middle-class, even wealthy, Trump supporters who turned out at his rallies draped in MAGA gear. When one looks at the loudest champions of Trumpism – from rural small business owners to suburban retirees – their passion is far more about identity and dominance than about economic policy. After all, Trump’s signature economic policy was a tax cut for the rich; he campaigned as a populist but governed largely as a plutocrat, and his base didn’t rebel. In fact, cultural issues (immigration, gun rights, racial justice protests) consistently lit up his base far more than, say, infrastructure spending or trade policy. We must conclude that Trump’s support was fundamentally cultural, not economic. Economic anxiety was at best a subsidiary factor that Trump cynically exploited by scapegoating immigrants and foreign nations – thereby feeding the very xenophobia and resentment that truly drove his support. Voters who were truly concerned with their wages and healthcare had many reasons to abandon Trump once he proved inept; that they did not suggests they liked something else about him more than they disliked his failure to improve their lot.

2. “Trump’s supporters were misled by fake news and Fox News – they didn’t know the truth.” There is no doubt that the right-wing media ecosystem – Fox News, OANN, talk radio, Facebook propaganda, etc. – created an alternate reality for many of Trump’s followers. Many truly believe false things (like the QAnon fantasy that Trump was fighting a cabal of pedophile elites, or the lie that Antifa, not Trump supporters, stormed the Capitol). The pervasive misinformation is a crisis. However, this does not fully excuse the behavior of Trump’s electorate. Americans have agency in what media they consume and what they choose to believe. Millions sought out Trump-aligned media because it told them comforting things that aligned with their prejudices. Being misinformed is not an accident when one consistently chooses to trust proven liars over credible sources. For example, by 2020 Trump had told over 30,000 documented lies or misleading statements as president (as fact-checked by major news organizations). Yet his supporters either did not hear about these lies (because they only watched Trump-friendly media) or they didn’t care, writing it off as media bias. The choice to cocoon oneself in propaganda was itself a moral choice. Moreover, many of Trump’s most egregious actions were done in plain view, not hidden in obscure news reports. One didn’t need CNN or The New York Times to tell you that Trump mocked a disabled person or insulted Gold Star parents – video of those incidents went viral on the internet and was unavoidable. Even Fox News covered some of Trump’s outrageous statements (sometimes to praise them). A Trump voter might not read an academic takedown of his immigration policies, but they knew he called Mexicans rapists and that he instituted a Muslim ban, because he announced those things himself at rallies or bill signings. So the plea of ignorance only goes so far. Indeed, research by journalist Anne Applebaum and others on authoritarian movements finds that many people believe obvious lies because it demonstrates their loyalty to the team – it’s a feature of authoritarian followership to embrace the leader’s version of reality even when easily disproven. We see this in how swiftly Trump’s base accepted the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, despite a total lack of evidence. It wasn’t that they carefully weighed the evidence and were misled; it’s that emotionally, they wanted to believe it because they could not countenance their side losing. In that sense, the disinformation argument becomes circular: they believe lies because they choose to trust only Trump, whom they believe because they choose to trust only Trump… and so on. Ultimately, being duped by lies is not an exoneration when one has willfully put on the blindfold. A citizen in a democracy has a responsibility to consume information critically. Millions abdicated that, which is a moral failing in its own right.

3. “Many Trump voters didn’t like his behavior but voted for him for other reasons (like party loyalty, conservative judges, abortion, etc.).” It is true that not every Trump voter adored his tweets or rally rants. Some found him distasteful but convinced themselves that policy outcomes (e.g., a conservative Supreme Court or deregulation or simply having a Republican in charge) outweighed the rest. However, even this more charitable description implicates those voters in a moral trade-off. They decided that tax cuts were worth tolerating kids in cages, or that judges were worth tolerating a president who tried to subvert democracy. There comes a point where the costs outweigh the benefits so dramatically that choosing Trump cannot be justified by these narrow interests. For example, a voter who says “I don’t like Trump’s character, but I want pro-life judges” must reckon with the fact that those judges come via a man who is spreading hate and undermining the republic. If you still choose the judges over the clear and present danger to the country, you have effectively sold out democracy and decency for policy preference. That may be a rational choice to some, but it is not an honorable one. Furthermore, if a critical mass of Republicans had truly been disgusted by Trump’s conduct, they could have pressured their party to nominate someone else in 2020 or 2024, or at least not turned out in such lockstep for him. Instead, Trump remained wildly popular within the GOP. This suggests that those “reluctant” Trump voters were fewer than advertised. Often, claims of reluctance are a form of social desirability bias – people not wanting to admit they like Trump’s nastiness, so they couch it in policy. But watch what happened whenever Trump’s name was not on the ballot: Republican turnout sagged. Trump brought out voters who did not reliably turn out for milder Republicans. Why? Because those voters were motivated by Trump’s persona (the cruelty, the showmanship, the “strength”) more than by any standard Republican platform. Many held their nose not about Trump’s character, but about the Republican establishment’s unease with Trump! They preferred Trump’s wild style to a conventional politician’s approach. It’s also telling that some traditionally GOP voters who genuinely couldn’t stomach Trump’s behavior either voted third-party or even Biden in 2020 – meaning those who stayed did stomach it. In moral terms, if you vote for a man who you know has abused women, inflamed racism, and plotted to overturn an election, you own that vote. You don’t get to pretend it wasn’t an endorsement of everything that comes with Trump. Trump’s second impeachment for inciting insurrection presented an opportunity for Republicans to disavow him; instead, the party stuck with him. As one conservative columnist wrote, “Trump’s base made it clear: They wanted the party to stand by Trump no matter what, or they would revolt. So the party did.” In essence, even Republicans who personally disliked Trump felt compelled to fall in line because the voter base gave them no choice. This underscores the point: the voters actively kept Trumpism alive. They could have relegated Trump to pariah status after January 6th by abandoning him en masse. They did not.

4. “What about those who didn’t vote? Isn’t it unfair to blame ‘Americans’ when a big chunk never supported him or even voted at all?” It’s true that Trump never had majority support of Americans; his elections were enabled by the Electoral College (2016) and by narrow wins in key states (and presumably in 2024 by again playing the map cleverly). Also, turnout is such that many Americans did not vote. However, the non-voters are not an exonerating factor – in fact they too bear some responsibility, albeit of a different kind. Those who opposed Trump but didn’t bother to vote against him allowed the energized minority to carry the day. Apathy in the face of rising authoritarianism is a form of acquiescence. Still, our primary focus is on those who affirmatively chose Trump. And while they were a minority of the overall eligible population, they were a large minority. We are talking about 74 million people in 2020, and apparently a similar or greater number in 2024. That is not some tiny fringe; it’s nearly half of active voters. So yes, not all Americans chose cruelty – but enough did that it defines us globally. If 46% of the country votes for open cruelty, the country has a cruelty problem. Even among those who didn’t vote for Trump, many have family or friends who did, and the country as a whole has to face why that is. The fact remains that Trump could not have succeeded without millions of regular Americans willing to hand him power. It wasn’t a military coup or foreign imposition; it was ordinary voters. And importantly, in 2024, his vote share actually increased in raw numbers in many places, suggesting no significant regret among his 2020 backers and possibly new converts. So while it is absolutely correct that a majority of Americans opposed Trump, this essay’s argument holds the mirror up to those who did not. As a society, the existence of such a large authoritarian constituency is a danger to everyone, even those who opposed it. Thus “America” in a collective sense does bear the consequences. Or as Mystal phrased it, “I could be more specific about the ‘we’… Roughly half of ‘us’ didn’t vote for this travesty… But America did this. America, through a free and fair election, demanded this… and deserves to get what it wants.”. The collective shame is part of the polemical point – not to blame those who resisted, but to emphasize that as a nation we have to reckon with almost half our population embracing something so vile that it endangers the whole.

In dismantling these counterarguments, we arrive at an uncomfortable conclusion: there really is no exonerating narrative that removes moral accountability from Trump’s voters. The standard excuses either fail empirically or still amount to “yes, but we were okay with the cruelty.” Economic concerns do not justify children in cages. Being fooled by propaganda does not absolve cheering for chants of “Send her back!” directed at a Black congresswoman. Holding one’s nose for a tax cut does not excuse endorsing a man who encouraged a coup. The electorate made choices – and choices have moral weight.

Conclusion: A Mirror and a Warning

Donald Trump’s legacy is not merely a catalog of personal indecencies and anti-democratic actions; it is also a revealing mirror held up to the American public. Twice, Americans placed Trump in the Oval Office (once through election and once through re-election), fully aware of the character he carried. In doing so, those voters implicitly declared that his lack of policy, lack of decency, lack of respect for law, and lack of knowledge were not deal-breakers – indeed, for many they were positive attributes. Trump’s ethos of cruelty, ignorance, and authoritarianism was actively chosen by tens of millions. This forces us to confront a painful reality: the problem was never just Trump, the problem is also the segment of America that wanted Trump.

Trump himself, in one of his rare moments of inadvertent insight, captured this truth in his dark inaugural address invoking “American carnage,” and in his 2024 campaign message of vengeance. By saying “I am your retribution,” he acknowledged that a politics of payback and cruelty was what his supporters desired. By joking that he could get away with murder and not lose support, he highlighted a fanatical devotion among his base. Each time the American people had a chance to reject him decisively – after Access Hollywood, after Charlottesville, after impeachment, after Jan. 6 – a frighteningly large number chose instead to embrace him tighter, rationalizing or even celebrating his transgressions. The conclusion practically writes itself: Trumpism succeeded because it tapped into a real vein of cruelty and authoritarian longing in the American electorate. For those voters, Trump was an avatar – a blunt instrument to wield against the people and principles they despised.

This is not to say all Trump voters are irredeemably cruel or racist in their personal lives; people are complex and many probably compartmentalized their vote. But when acting as a political collective, those nuances matter little. At the ballot box, it was a binary choice, and choosing Trump meant affirming what he stood for. To paraphrase a common saying: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Trump showed the country exactly who he was. His voters believed him – and liked him that way. That is a bitter pill for America to swallow.

It might be comforting to attribute Trump’s rise to external forces or misunderstandings. But doing so denies agency to the voters and obscures the real challenge: how to address the fact that a huge portion of our neighbors and fellow citizens willingly cheered an agenda of cruelty and unchecked power. Some commentators after 2020 tried to insist “this isn’t who we are.” But as time went on, it became evident that for many, this is exactly who we are. “We are not better than Trump,” wrote Mystal, “Trump reflects us more accurately than perhaps any president ever has”. Those are haunting words. If Trump reflects America, it is an America that liberals and conservatives of conscience alike must work to change. Because the impulses that Trump inflamed – racism, vengeance, disdain for truth – predated him and still persist. He simply ripped off the polite mask.

Holding Trump’s voters morally accountable is not about punishment or hate; it’s about clarity. It is about rejecting the comforting lies that “people didn’t know better” or “they were just desperate.” No – they knew what they were doing. Recognizing that is the first step to any national healing, because it means any solution must involve changing hearts and minds, not just removing one man from power. Trump’s two elections are warnings that American democracy is fragile not just because of would-be authoritarians, but because of millions who would willingly hand power to such authoritarians.

In the final analysis, Donald Trump’s presidencies will be remembered for unleashing a torrent of cruelty and lawlessness at the highest levels of government. But the deeper historical verdict will concern the citizenry that empowered him. When Americans had the opportunity to reject cruelty and demand decency, a great many instead shouted for more cruelty, more retribution. This is a stain on our national character that cannot be washed away easily. It must be confronted honestly. Trump’s slogan was “Make America Great Again,” but his effect was to reveal an America at its worst. And too many Americans were not only untroubled by the worst – they wanted it.

The task ahead, if there is to be hope, is for the majority who do believe in decency, knowledge, and law to strengthen the guardrails and win the battle of ideas. They must persuade those on the fence that garbage is not okay, that we can be better than our worst instincts. America’s exceptionalism, if it exists, cannot be in pretending Trump was an aberration but in overcoming the conditions that made Trump possible. Because if we write off Trump’s ascent as a fluke, we risk it happening again (with perhaps an abler demagogue). The chilling truth is that the American electorate’s flirtation with authoritarian cruelty is not over; it remains a powerful force. Only by acknowledging the electorate’s role – that Trump’s cruelty was a mirror reflecting a part of America’s soul – can we begin to change the reflection.

In 1867, after the Civil War, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Our Government may at some time be in the hands of a bad man… We ought to have our Government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.” We had in Trump a bad man, twice elected, and we were decidedly not safe – children suffered, the vulnerable were attacked, the Constitution was trampled. The safety failed because the people themselves invited the danger in. Let us learn from this: Trumpism was chosen, which means a better future must also be chosen, through moral courage and accountability. The American public will have to prove that Trump’s reign of cruelty was a mistake of choice, not destiny. Until then, the verdict stands that we got the leadership we deserved – and it is up to us to deserve better.

Sources:

Serwer, Adam. “The Cruelty Is the Point.” The Atlantic, Oct. 3, 2018.

Wehner, Peter. “Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form.” The Atlantic, Aug. 2021.

Lopez, German. “Trump won because of racial resentment.” Vox, Dec. 15, 2017.

Mystal, Elie. “There’s No Denying It Anymore: Trump Is Not a Fluke—He’s America.” The Nation, Nov. 7, 2024.

Washington Post-University of Maryland Poll (Weiner, Clement & Guskin). “Republican loyalty to Trump, rioters climbs in 3 years after Jan. 6.” The Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2024.

Prokop, Andrew. “Why Republicans didn’t write a platform for 2020.” Vox, Aug. 24, 2020.

Trump, Donald. Speech at CPAC, March 4, 2023 (Transcript via Rev).

Reuters/Ipsos poll report. “Confident Trump says he could ‘shoot somebody’ and not lose voters.” Reuters, Jan. 24, 2016.

Atlantic Staff. “Trump’s Followers Are Living in a Dark Fantasy.” The Atlantic, Nov. 2024.

Serwer, Adam. The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America. (Book, 2021). [Various excerpts].