Opinion | What Non-MAGA Trump Supporters See In Him

The people I tend to know are not, would never go to a MAGA rally. If you’re going to cover Trump and MAGA or the Trump movement, do not go to MAGA rallies. That’s not the representative sample. Most people I know who voted for Trump don’t like him. They find him troubling in a zillion ways. They disagree with certain policies like the tariffs, but they basically buy his story. They buy his story that the elites have betrayed us. And one of the ways the elites have betrayed us, they would say, and I sort of agree, is in the Biden years, immigration just massively exploded. And so I heard from a guy from Montana last week. And he said, talking to progressives, “You guys had 40 years to police yourselves and you didn’t do it. And therefore, now it’s our turn. You had your shot.” And I would say they would say that about immigration. They would say that about the universities. Eighty-two percent of college students think they have to lie to professors and pretend they’re more progressive than they are in order to get through school. And that’s a form of soft authoritarianism, frankly. And if the universities did not police themselves and get more diversity, then somebody was going to crack down. So I would say a lot of the people I know still think Trump is the right answer to a bunch of serious social problems, even if they have a zillion different reservations about the guy.