approach is hardly novel; author Thomas Frank explained how reactionaries paint themselves as common folk while serving the interests of the economic elite in his classic 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” by largely ignoring economic realities.
Indeed. Trump is a capitalist who has combated unions, outsourced production of his many products to countries like China and Mexico, scammed vulnerable working class people out of thousands at his defunct Trump University, and attempted numerous times to seize the property of unwilling homeowners and small business owners through eminent domain. As Obama implied, Trump is the last person who should be expected to lead a working class movement.
Of course, the billionaire is not leading a working class movement in a typical progressive or socialist sense, but a reactionary one. The Trump campaign can be described as anti-intellectual and anti-internationalist rather than anti-elitist or anti-capitalist. Trump hasn’t derided the capitalist system or the billionaire plutocrats who profit so handsomely because of it (after all, he is one of them), but the technocratic experts in government, the snobby intellectuals in academia, the politically correct liberals in the media, and so on.
In a recent NPR interview, President Obama: “Mr. Trump embodies global elites and has taken full advantage of it his entire life,” said the president. “So, he’s hardly a spokesperson — a legitimate spokesperson — for a populist surge from working class people on either side of the Atlantic.”
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