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The Case Against Trump
Donald Trump, who rocketed to the top of the polls in the early GOP primary race, is an unlikely Republican a longtime supporter of Democratic politicians with a history of taking views opposed to those of mainstream conservatives. A household name for his reality-television show and his tawdry tabloid history, he has connected with an underappreciated strain of right-wing populists by focusing his fire on a single immigration.
In this Broadside, Kevin D. Williamson takes a hard look at the Trump phenomenon and the failures of the national Republican leadership – and defects in our national character – that gave it life. Trump may or may not be in the race for the long haul, but in either case, Trumpism will remain a force.
In this Broadside, Kevin D. Williamson takes a hard look at the Trump phenomenon and the failures of the national Republican leadership – and defects in our national character – that gave it life. Trump may or may not be in the race for the long haul, but in either case, Trumpism will remain a force.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
48 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 2015
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About the author
Kevin D. Williamson
9 books115 followersKevin D. Williamson is National Review's roving correspondent. He is the author of The End Is Near and It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure, The Dependency Agenda, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, and contributed chapters to The New Leviathan: The State Vs. the Individual in the 21st Century and Future Tense: Lessons of Culture in an Age of Upheaval. When he is not sounding the alarm about fiscal armageddon, he co-hosts the Mad Dogs & Englishmen podcast with fellow National Review writer Charles C. W. Cooke.
Williamson began his journalism career at the Bombay-based Indian Express Newspaper Group and spent 15 years in the newspaper business in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. He served as editor-in-chief of three newspapers and was the founding editor of Philadelphia's Bulletin. He is a regulator commentator on Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, and NPR. His work has appeared in The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Commentary, Academic Questions, and The New Criterion, where he served as theater critic. He is a native of Lubbock, Texas.
Williamson began his journalism career at the Bombay-based Indian Express Newspaper Group and spent 15 years in the newspaper business in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. He served as editor-in-chief of three newspapers and was the founding editor of Philadelphia's Bulletin. He is a regulator commentator on Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, and NPR. His work has appeared in The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Commentary, Academic Questions, and The New Criterion, where he served as theater critic. He is a native of Lubbock, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 5, 2015
Kevin D. Williamson, The Case Against Trump, Encounter Broadside No. 46 (New York: Encounter Books, 2015). Paperback | Kindle
“It is impossible to say how and when the Trump phenomenon will end,” Kevin D. Williamson writes in the latest Encounter Broadside. “It should end; rather, it never should have begun.” To which I can only add my hearty agreement.
I am a white male, an evangelical Christian, and a conservative Republican. According to mainstream media, I should therefore be a supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. I am not, I never was, and to be frank, I never will be.
Trump has neither my vote in the GOP primary nor will he get my vote in the general election. He is a man and he may be a Christian (of some sort), but he has never been a conservative, and he has only recently become a Republican. Why he garners support among Republicans is a great mystery to me. The vast majority of Republicans don’t support him.
Williamson attributes Trump’s success so far to his willingness “to address the question [of immigration] from an American-interest point of view,” and to do it “belligerently”; to his “celebrity”; and to the “anti-trade hysteria” that results from “a crisis in American manhood.” Williamson makes the case that Trump’s celebrity is overrated because the candidate isn’t that good a businessman. (His father’s success is the foundation of his fortune, his brand is declining, and his company has sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections a record four times.) Williamson further argues that Trump’s positions on immigration and trade are both simplistic and unrealistic, not to mention wrong.
But Williamson’s reference to America’s manhood crisis introduces the strangest section in his pamphlet. He writes of “American men born in the ’70s, or ’80s hark[ing] back to an imaginary blue-collar economy in which a man could earn a secure place in society (and hence in the sexual hierarchy) through simple dedicated labor at a factory.” The last three decades have not been kind to that imagined economy, but Trump’s supporters seem to be drawn from its imaginers.
Take out the parenthetical remark and Williamson’s point makes sense. Trump draws support from disappointed, white, blue-collar workers who are frustrated with the direction the economy and the country has taken. It’s hard not to be sympathetic to their plight, even if you disagree with their policy choices. Sexualizing their disappointment, as Williamson does, is weird and underhanded.
Nevertheless, on the whole, Williamson has a point. Trump is a crude man—personally, rhetorically, and policy-wise—and the fact that he is nonetheless popular is worrisome. “Donald J. Trump’s admirers gleefully consider the possibility that he could be the end of the Republican Party,” Williamson concludes. “He could be the end of a lot more than that.”
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P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
“It is impossible to say how and when the Trump phenomenon will end,” Kevin D. Williamson writes in the latest Encounter Broadside. “It should end; rather, it never should have begun.” To which I can only add my hearty agreement.
I am a white male, an evangelical Christian, and a conservative Republican. According to mainstream media, I should therefore be a supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. I am not, I never was, and to be frank, I never will be.
Trump has neither my vote in the GOP primary nor will he get my vote in the general election. He is a man and he may be a Christian (of some sort), but he has never been a conservative, and he has only recently become a Republican. Why he garners support among Republicans is a great mystery to me. The vast majority of Republicans don’t support him.
Williamson attributes Trump’s success so far to his willingness “to address the question [of immigration] from an American-interest point of view,” and to do it “belligerently”; to his “celebrity”; and to the “anti-trade hysteria” that results from “a crisis in American manhood.” Williamson makes the case that Trump’s celebrity is overrated because the candidate isn’t that good a businessman. (His father’s success is the foundation of his fortune, his brand is declining, and his company has sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections a record four times.) Williamson further argues that Trump’s positions on immigration and trade are both simplistic and unrealistic, not to mention wrong.
But Williamson’s reference to America’s manhood crisis introduces the strangest section in his pamphlet. He writes of “American men born in the ’70s, or ’80s hark[ing] back to an imaginary blue-collar economy in which a man could earn a secure place in society (and hence in the sexual hierarchy) through simple dedicated labor at a factory.” The last three decades have not been kind to that imagined economy, but Trump’s supporters seem to be drawn from its imaginers.
Take out the parenthetical remark and Williamson’s point makes sense. Trump draws support from disappointed, white, blue-collar workers who are frustrated with the direction the economy and the country has taken. It’s hard not to be sympathetic to their plight, even if you disagree with their policy choices. Sexualizing their disappointment, as Williamson does, is weird and underhanded.
Nevertheless, on the whole, Williamson has a point. Trump is a crude man—personally, rhetorically, and policy-wise—and the fact that he is nonetheless popular is worrisome. “Donald J. Trump’s admirers gleefully consider the possibility that he could be the end of the Republican Party,” Williamson concludes. “He could be the end of a lot more than that.”
-----
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
August 11, 2020
A searing critique that, though pretty much accurate, is of mostly historical interest now. At the time Williamson wrote this pamphlet (part of the Encounter Broadsides series) in 2015, Trump was by no means the front runner in the GOP and had only half-formulated positions—barely amounting to slogans—on two issues: immigration and foreign trade.
Williamson spends the first two-thirds of the pamphlet on these two topics, critiquing both the media’s and the broader political establishment’s refusal to grapple with legitimate problems and address legitimate concerns and Trump’s manipulation of these issues to build popular support for what is essentially a grandiose celebrity tour. There is quite a lot of merit to Williamson’s examination, though after five years of other problems ranging from Twitter bloviations to impeachment and pandemic, immigration and trade—arguably the issues that got Trump elected (though I think I agree with Williamson that Trump’s supporters were voting for a personality more than a slate of policies)—seem quaint. Remember the wall? It has not materialized, paid for by Mexico or not.
Where I think Williamson’s critique treads on shakier ground is in the final third or so, in which he examines Trump as a person and a creature of tabloid celebrity and, by extension, Trump’s supporters. He looks at the vast gulf between Trump’s persona as a sharp, tough-talking, artiste of the deal who has built a real estate empire worth billions and the reality as a tawdry, amoral hustler whose businesses have gone repeatedly bankrupt and are worth far, far less than claimed.
All this is fair enough, especially in 2015 when the Trump reputation—the brand—was the whole selling point. But the lengthy section psychologizing the Trump supporter, considered in the aggregate, as an abstraction, reaches too far. Williamson paints a portrait of a mass of resentful, disaffected troglodytes, easily impressed by the tacky faux-Bourbon trappings of Trump’s lifestyle, motivated by vague paranoias about foreigners and unrecognized homoerotic impulses to worship Trump, and rage-masturbating to Megyn Kelly while typing up their hate mail to various “cucks.” Do such people exist? Certainly! Do I know any among the many, many Trump supporters I know? Not a one.
I’ve heard Williamson speculate along these lines many times before, and sometimes I think he’s dead on. But something about such a line of criticism has always bothered me, and reading this pamphlet I finally realized why. Yesterday I was listening to a collection of CS Lewis essays (magnificently read by Ralph Cosham) and among them was “Bulverism.” Here’s Lewis:
That’s the problem. The passage explains Trump supporters as if they are freaks or abnormalities in a jar, imputing all kinds of motivations and atavistic impulses to them, without really arguing against them. In some cases I’d say this has merit; here it turns into derisive ad hominem. Which is another issue with this broadside—as other reviewers have remarked, people won’t be scolded into changing positions, and the tack taken here strikes me as supremely unhelpful, even where it’s on target.
Recommended for the rigorous engagement with Trump’s early non-positions on immigration and trade at the beginning, and for the final two or three pages, where Williamson fires a really damning one-paragraph salvo that says all that really needed to be said:
An interesting look back from the vantage point of only five years.
Williamson spends the first two-thirds of the pamphlet on these two topics, critiquing both the media’s and the broader political establishment’s refusal to grapple with legitimate problems and address legitimate concerns and Trump’s manipulation of these issues to build popular support for what is essentially a grandiose celebrity tour. There is quite a lot of merit to Williamson’s examination, though after five years of other problems ranging from Twitter bloviations to impeachment and pandemic, immigration and trade—arguably the issues that got Trump elected (though I think I agree with Williamson that Trump’s supporters were voting for a personality more than a slate of policies)—seem quaint. Remember the wall? It has not materialized, paid for by Mexico or not.
Where I think Williamson’s critique treads on shakier ground is in the final third or so, in which he examines Trump as a person and a creature of tabloid celebrity and, by extension, Trump’s supporters. He looks at the vast gulf between Trump’s persona as a sharp, tough-talking, artiste of the deal who has built a real estate empire worth billions and the reality as a tawdry, amoral hustler whose businesses have gone repeatedly bankrupt and are worth far, far less than claimed.
All this is fair enough, especially in 2015 when the Trump reputation—the brand—was the whole selling point. But the lengthy section psychologizing the Trump supporter, considered in the aggregate, as an abstraction, reaches too far. Williamson paints a portrait of a mass of resentful, disaffected troglodytes, easily impressed by the tacky faux-Bourbon trappings of Trump’s lifestyle, motivated by vague paranoias about foreigners and unrecognized homoerotic impulses to worship Trump, and rage-masturbating to Megyn Kelly while typing up their hate mail to various “cucks.” Do such people exist? Certainly! Do I know any among the many, many Trump supporters I know? Not a one.
I’ve heard Williamson speculate along these lines many times before, and sometimes I think he’s dead on. But something about such a line of criticism has always bothered me, and reading this pamphlet I finally realized why. Yesterday I was listening to a collection of CS Lewis essays (magnificently read by Ralph Cosham) and among them was “Bulverism.” Here’s Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
That’s the problem. The passage explains Trump supporters as if they are freaks or abnormalities in a jar, imputing all kinds of motivations and atavistic impulses to them, without really arguing against them. In some cases I’d say this has merit; here it turns into derisive ad hominem. Which is another issue with this broadside—as other reviewers have remarked, people won’t be scolded into changing positions, and the tack taken here strikes me as supremely unhelpful, even where it’s on target.
Recommended for the rigorous engagement with Trump’s early non-positions on immigration and trade at the beginning, and for the final two or three pages, where Williamson fires a really damning one-paragraph salvo that says all that really needed to be said:
It is impossible to say how and when the Trump phenomenon will end. It should end; rather, it never should have begun. Donald J Trump spent most of his life as a progressive Democrat, a patron of Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Rodham Clinton—the woman against whom Trump presumably would be running. He is a lifelong crony capitalist who boasts of using his wealth to buy political favors to make himself wealthier still. He is a proponent of the thieving Kelo eminent-domain regime and has attempted to suborn local governments into using eminent domain to seize properties in order to clear the way for his casino developments. He was until the day before yesterday as absolutist a proabortion advocate as any you’d find at an Emily’s List meeting. He has proposed daft, confiscatory wealth taxes and remains in accord with Warren Buffett and Elizabeth Warren on taxation. His views on trade and immigration are much more like those of Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, than they are anything that might plausibly be described as “conservative” in the American context. He is apparently incapable of stringing together three complete English sentences, lies reflexively and instinctively, and contradicts his own pronouncements at every turn. On the verge of his 70th birthday, his mind remains unsettled about the most elementary issues of our time.
An interesting look back from the vantage point of only five years.
December 19, 2015
Williamson is usually brilliant and insightful, but The Case Against Trump is not his best work, unfortunately, rarely rising above the level of crude insult and largely missing the point. Apparently the case against Trump is that he's smarmy, blustering, shallow, and self-absorbed. Well, no kidding. Trump's supporters know these things (which are, after all, perfectly obvious) and support him anyway. They are not going to be scolded into dropping him; the Republican Party is going to have to produce a better candidate who can beat him. Spitting poison at Trump supporters is an almost sure-fire means of ensuring that they bolt the party just when they're needed to help prevent another eight years of managed decline. The real case against Trump will sooner or later need to be made, but this Broadside contributes very little to the effort.
Read
April 4, 2019Three-quarters of Hanson’s book focuses not on Trump himself or on his policies but on the awesome gap that has grown between “the two Americas” — the people in Selma and similar towns and cities ravaged by globalism, and the bi-coastal elite.
The unstated goal of The Case for Trump is to give a voice to these voiceless people.
To those ravaged by globalism, Trump was the only candidate in 2016 who spoke clearly and directly about the issues that most concerned them — a return of jobs and an end to unlawful immigration
Hanson explains, Trump is “chemotherapy, which after all is used to combat something far worse than itself.” They also get a vicarious thrill from his brawling, seeing it, Hanson writes, “as a long overdue push back to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them.”
Be that as it may, Hanson credits Trump with remarkable successes, including, to name just a few: the vibrant economy, record employment, two successful Supreme Court appointments, a slew of federal judicial appointments, the re-calibration in trade relations with China, the moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the restoring of American deterrence against Russia and China. But these successes will never offer Trump a path to national respectability.
VDH points out The Democratic-party faithful appear more intent than ever on forcing the country on a march to social justice. They have yet to learn that their open contempt for the working class played a role in their stunning loss in 2016.
Part two of the book covers the holy trinity of opposition to Trump. Democrats, Establishment republicans and the deep state DC bureaucracy. This helps us understand why they so hate Trump.
The unstated goal of The Case for Trump is to give a voice to these voiceless people.
To those ravaged by globalism, Trump was the only candidate in 2016 who spoke clearly and directly about the issues that most concerned them — a return of jobs and an end to unlawful immigration
Hanson explains, Trump is “chemotherapy, which after all is used to combat something far worse than itself.” They also get a vicarious thrill from his brawling, seeing it, Hanson writes, “as a long overdue push back to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them.”
Be that as it may, Hanson credits Trump with remarkable successes, including, to name just a few: the vibrant economy, record employment, two successful Supreme Court appointments, a slew of federal judicial appointments, the re-calibration in trade relations with China, the moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the restoring of American deterrence against Russia and China. But these successes will never offer Trump a path to national respectability.
VDH points out The Democratic-party faithful appear more intent than ever on forcing the country on a march to social justice. They have yet to learn that their open contempt for the working class played a role in their stunning loss in 2016.
Part two of the book covers the holy trinity of opposition to Trump. Democrats, Establishment republicans and the deep state DC bureaucracy. This helps us understand why they so hate Trump.
January 24, 2021
Great read!
Williamson points out the many flaws of Trump that we knew to exist well before he became president. He also pointed out that Trump lived his entire life opposite the principles his future followers would claim to adhere.
Williamson points out the many flaws of Trump that we knew to exist well before he became president. He also pointed out that Trump lived his entire life opposite the principles his future followers would claim to adhere.
August 25, 2020
One of many Donald books
November 19, 2015
A fine start.
April 11, 2016
One word: scary!!!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews