The most unexplored and ignored aspect of the nine-year odyssey of President Donald J. Trump is that, despite his wealth, Trump’s lifestyle and habits appeal to a far larger share of Americans than the elite passions for fine foods and highbrow books, movies, and television.
This struck me as I watched the coverage of President Trump’s trip to Madison Square Garden for an Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday. As President Trump ate McDonald’s on his plane, it occurred to me that there is a cultural appeal which endears Trump to most Americans.
People have often said that politics is downstream from culture. Usually, they mean intellectual and artistic culture defines politics. The theory is that what the professors teach this decade may shape the political debate a decade from now.
This definition is too narrow. Culture can also be consumer tastes and citizen choices about what they like and with what they are comfortable.
President Trump’s lifestyle and recreational choices dwarf the attractiveness of the left in the same zones.
On Saturday night, President Trump and some friends went to Madison Square Garden to watch a UFC event with Dana White, the CEO of UFC. The President was accompanied by Elon Musk, Speaker Mike Johnson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kid Rock, and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
When President Trump walked into the Garden, the standing room only crowd went wild and began chanting “USA.” Joe Rogan, the most successful podcaster in the world, commented that the noise was unbelievable because people were so enthusiastic. Rogan has long been a commentator for UFC. His podcast interview with President Trump attracted more than 40 million watchers and listeners – and had a bigger audience than the opening game of the World Series.
The left’s reaction to this outing explains a lot about its failure to understand the cultural and political revolutions which are underway.
As the Daily Beast reported, “Panelists on CNN’s Inside Politics compared Donald Trump to tyrannical Roman emperor Julius Caesar after he attended a UFC event in New York last night. The panelists mocked Trump’s attendance at the event.”
To say that “they just don’t get it” is an extreme understatement.
The key insight for me was the picture of the President, Musk, Kennedy, Johnson and Don Trump Jr. eating McDonald’s on the plane. Don Trump Jr. cheerfully held up the box of French fries his father had been giving out a few weeks ago when he worked at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.
As I’ve written before an estimated 87 percent of Americans visit McDonald’s at least once a year. Further, 40 million Americans have worked at McDonald’s, including Jeff Bezos. In terms of cultural identification, it would have been hard to top President Trump selling French fries at the drive-thru window.
Because President Trump made his career building properties, he has a knack with blue collar workers. This has been a major part of the enormous transition of the GOP into the workers’ party.
Oprah talked Trump into letting her film him at his Chicago hotel doing a variety of jobs in 2011. You can watch Bellman Trump walking a dog for a customer (and asking plaintively if he has earned a tip). Here is a future President working as a waiter and helping load luggage. After you watch that you will better understand how comfortable he was riding in a garbage truck and wearing the vest of a garbage collector.
Sports may be the biggest gap between the left and most Americans. When we talk about culture, we must remember that virtually all sports favor winning, working hard, striving for excellence, showing endurance, and getting back up when knocked down. “Fight, fight, fight” is the constant mantra for competitive athletes.
The left’s contempt for sports is even greater than its contempt for McDonald’s. Yet, the market for sports among normal Americans is enormous.
An estimated 1 billion people a week worldwide watch World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The WWE’s cofounder is Linda McMahon. She is also cochair of the Trump transition. Millions of people have watched the clip of the so-called “Battle of the Billionaires” when Trump tackled WWE co-owner (and Linda McMahon’s husband) Vince McMahon in 2007 (it’s still on YouTube and still hilarious).
Golf is also a constant in President Trump’s life. There are 45 million Americans who golf and an estimated 40 percent of all Americans (135 million) read about it or watch it on TV.
Football, and especially the NFL, are enormous draws on television. Sunday Night Football has averaged more than 20 million viewers every Sunday for the last six weeks. There was a classic irony in Saturday Night Live (audience about 5.6 million) giving Vice President Kamala Harris enough coverage that NBC felt constrained to give the same amount of time to President Trump on Sunday Night Football (20 million plus viewers).
The conservative pro-sports culture outdrew the liberal comedy show by nearly 4:1. That is a pretty good yardstick for the relative appeal of the Trump competitive worldview and the shrinking base of the leftwing worldview.
This concept of a lifestyle cultural divide is worthy of a lot more study and may explain a lot more than traditional political analysis.
It’s also the biggest aspect of Trump’s appeal that the left simply doesn’t get.
– – –
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
Photo “Trump Arrives” by Team Trump.
