Bill Ram Z Paul Gates put out this interesting video about why the left hates Trump, blaming Trump’s whiteness and his popularity among whites:
I more or less agree with this. In spite of the insistence by dems of Trump’s supposed ‘white nationalist’ loyalties, if Trump is a white nationalist, his actions suggests he is not doing a good job at it. He’s possibly more deferential to Israel and any other president (even Jews will admit this), and efforts to restrict immigration (both legal and illegal), return jobs to America, or do something about the opioid epidemic ravaging communities in the Rust Belt and the Northeast, have stalled or gone nowhere. As Bill notes, progress on the wall is non-existent, and rather than new wall being created, rather, some segments of old wall are being refurbished. His toughens on China, which is more for show than actual action, may have hurt farmers domestically, and have not added jobs or helped return jobs to America.
Trump projects toughness and taking a ‘hard line’ on Mexico and China, and then capitulates like a mom acceding to the demands of a whiny child. He talks tough, only to turn on a dime when encountering resistance, as we saw regarding Trump backing-down on migrant family separations policy, detention camp conditions, or the travel ban. After holding a summit on censorship by social media companies (that predominantly target the very people who support Trump), he soon after dropped the issue, pledging to ‘look into it’ but has taken no further action, probably after being wooed by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech billionaires. I don’t blame Trump, as being too tough on China or Mexico could jeopardize the strong economy and his reelection, and the tech sector is a major and part of the US economy, and private firms have autonomy over who can or cannot use their platforms. There is no need for Trump to create unnecessary disturbances, to placate a small, vocal far-right constituency. I agree with economists that the evidence suggests that Trump’s tariffs have not created jobs. Rather, the falling unemployment is due to the overall expansion of the US economy.
But to Trump’s credit, the stock market has been on an unstoppable tear (as I predicted), the US economy is booming (also predicted), unemployment is the lowest in decades, there is little to no unrest domestically (also predicted), and Trump has kept America out of further wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, in addition to many important judicial appointments. Some may argue that the stock market is being propped up by the fed or that the gains only trickle down to a moneyed elite, but stock market gains help the middle class, too. I would not consider myself to be of the ‘moneyed elite,’ yet I have benefited, and so have many people who are not elites yet somewhere in the top 5-20% or so.
Regarding the fed propping up the market, gold peddlers such as Peter Schiff and alarmist websites such as Zero Hedge have making this argument as far back as 2009-2015, yet keep being wrong as the market relentlessly pushes higher and corporate earnings keep growing. Listening to them would have cost you immensely in terms of missed gains. Keep in mind the fed began raising rates in 2015, from 0% to as high as 2.5% in 2018, yet the market rose in that period, GDP grew, and unemployment fell to lower levels than before the 2008 crisis, so if the economy were really dependent on QE and low rates, there would have been a bear market and recession instead. Low interest rates help, as we have seen since early 2019, and Trump and Powell are doing everything in their power to keep the market as high as possible leading up to the election, such as by cutting rates again and injecting more liquidity into various repo markets; however, fed intervention and low rates are only contributing factors, secondary to consumer spending and record-high profits. It’s not the principle cause.
Back to the main topic of the article, why does the left hate Trump so strongly? Is it because,as Bill notes, Trump and most his supporters are white? That explains some of it, but in and of itself, an insufficient explanation. As for the media narrative of Trump being a white person’s candidate in the same way Obama saw a surge in black voter turnout by uniquely appealing to blacks, some might be surprised to learn that Trump actually got a smaller percent of the white vote than Romney, although that could change in 2020:
Romney got 59 percent of the white vote in 2012 and still lost the election, leading many analysts to reach the conclusion that America had become too diverse for Republicans to win without making major inroads among voters of color. Trump, however, won the election with just 58 percent of the white vote thanks to Clinton slipping to 37 percent down from Obama’s 39 percent with the excess going third party.
And Romeny got more votes overall than Trump too. 58% of whites voted for Bush in 2004, yet the left’s hatred of Trump is much more impassioned and animated than their dislike of either Romney or Bush. When Kanye West famously remarked in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that “Bush does not like Black people,” even some liberals were taken aback. Surely, Bush may have been indifferent, but dislike was a tad strong. Now fast-forward to today, and according to the mainstream-left, not only does Trump hate black people, but hates all minorities, and so do all his white supporters, too, by voting for him. Merely voting for Trump makes one complicit in supporting Trump’s post-2016 apartheid America, according to the left. That is how bad things have gotten and how insane and delusional the left has become (this may seem like hyperbole, but seeing racism where none exists is delusional and a form of insanity, much like how someone with schizophrenia has auditory and or visual hallucinations).
To blame the hatred of Trump on anti-whiteness also overlooks the fact that left-wing whites such as Jim Carey, George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Rosie O’Donnell are held in very high regard by the mainstream left. But as the recent backlash against J.K. Rowling shows, whites are possibly held to a higher standard by the left than other groups, and thus are more susceptible to committing wrong-speak. If not for her whiteness and wealth, would there have been as much backlash? Likely not. Blacks tend to oppose LGBT rights at a higher rate than Whites, yet the liberal media overlooks this.
I think this can be framed not in race but rather in terms of power relations, and race is downstream from power. What the left really hates, even more than whiteness, is a privileged group or individual imposing their beliefs on a less advantaged group or individual. This makes domineering group or individual a bully, which according to the left is even worse than merely being a bigot. Trump is hated mainly because the left views him as a giant bully. It all began in 2015 with disparaging comments about Rosie O’Donnell and about Mexico “bringing in rapists.” This cemented, from that moment on, the left’s inimical hatred of Trump that continues unabated to this day and probably until he dies. Before these remarks, the left disliked but at least tolerated Trump. Trump had connections with the predominantly left-wing New York political, entertainment, and real estate scene. Trump’s TV shows, The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, were huge successes, running from 2004 until his inauguration, and the latter featured, as the name suggests, celebrities, who tend to vote democratic and support democratic causes (if they are at all active in politics).