Why Trump Gets So Much Latitude

Democrats, progressives, and Trump critics now seem to understand that President Trump’s base is rock-solid. Those who have stood with him for this long are not going abandon him ever, for any reason.

But what these Trump antagonists may not fully appreciate is that for all of the things he’s said and done since he took the oath of office 21 days ago—which they see as wrong-headed and mean-spirited—support for him does not seem to have slipped by any measurable degree. He won the election with 49.8 percent of the vote. The new CBS/YouGov poll shows him with a 53 percent approval rating.

When Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris, there were enough voters who were either disappointed or angry with Harris and President Biden that Trump not only nearly won a majority, but also carried every swing state and made inroads into groups that heretofore had been solidly Democratic. If the Biden-Harris administration had accomplished even half of what they see themselves as having accomplished, either Biden or Harris would have won with several points to spare. But voters did not see it that way.

Trump tapped into a reservoir of frustration, fear, anger, and even some desperation. He taps into some dark feelings out there, maybe feelings that are ill-founded or even dangerous.

His supporters excuse a lot of his behaviors because they don't see that any of the leaders who preceded Trump addressed their concerns. Many are convinced that much of what the federal government does or attempts to do isn’t working at all, or at least isn’t working for them. These people see themselves, their family, friends, and neighbors as working harder and harder, yet not getting ahead, or even able to keep up. Some may even sense that others are being allowed to cut in line ahead of them and wonder how fair that is.

So they're willing to risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In the minds of some of these voters, they have tried everything else; how could this be any worse?

Anyone who believes that is not likely to shed many tears when they hear stories about federal programs being terminated left and right and government employees being terrified about losing their jobs.

Perhaps legislators who midwifed these policies and programs into being, and the federal workers who implement them, have been ineffective in communicating what value they provide.

But whether it’s a substantive issue or a communications problem, no one should be surprised when someone like Trump comes along with a meat axe intending to chop at anything and everything that gets in the way.

What Democrats, progressives, and Trump critics should be asking themselves is, why are so many people this angry? What might they have said or done that could have contributed to this many people being so alienated from the federal government and its employees?

Voters saw the Biden administration as having done little or nothing for three years in terms of dealing with the immigration issue. In Biden's last year, his administration changed policy, scoring some real gains, but that only seemed to underscore what didn’t happen in the first three.

Some programs are important but tougher to sell, even if vital to our national security. The soft power that comes from foreign aid—preventing deeply troubled countries from becoming completely failed states, or failed states becoming exporters of revolution, terrorism, famine, and disease—is hard to get across to the public.

About 20 years ago at a conference, I saw a presentation showing, first, how much more the U.S. spends on the military than our allies and adversaries combined, in both relative and absolute terms; then, how little as a percentage of GDP we spent on foreign assistance even compared with many other developed nations. It catalogued many of the biggest challenges facing the world and where those problems were coming from, particularly from a growing number of failed states. It made a convincing case that with a fairly modest investment of funds to keep these countries from failing more, we ultimately might be able to spend less on our own military. It was not a case intended to pull heartstrings, just about being penny-wise. But anyone who doesn't feel that their needs are being met at home is unlikely to be receptive to such a nuanced argument.

We’ve seen with our immigration problem what happens when social, political, and economic unrest becomes so prevalent in South and Central America that people flee. Their problems become our problems. Wouldn’t it have been better to deal with it there than here?

Maybe some who express outrage over what Trump says or does should instead ask themselves why there are so many who are receptive to what he is saying and doing. And perhaps, what the cost is of not paying attention to how and why those people feel the way they do.

This article was originally published for the National Journal on Feb. 10, 2025.