The status of being a Trump supporter has always been a precarious one. Because of Trump’s racist and sexist rhetoric throughout the Primaries, there has been a need, pretty much since the start, for supporters to have a go-to phrase for why they support Trump — without having to resort to the real, more unpopular reasons.
So it has become a refrain we hear pretty often, not just for Trump supporters, but any sort of supporter of the anti-Establishment.
“Donald Trump is saying what we’re all thinking. He is not afraid to be politically incorrect.”
They can’t use his actual policies. Because they only encompass about half a page’s worth of substance, and most of it is the racism they are trying to mask. They can’t claim he is more honest, as his penchant for dishonesty is well-known and well-documented. Many of his supporters and surrogates have even baked his dishonesty right into their support (“He doesn’t really mean what he says, he’s just saying that stuff to get attention”, etc). They can’t even turn to his success as a businessman anymore, because it keeps bringing up that pesky need for scrutiny, and then the issues such as his ties to Putin, his ties to failed or criminal enterprises, and releasing his damn taxes will keep showing up.
So they come up with reasoning like this, because even in their public protest of political correctness and the Establishment, they know that they can’t just come out and say they like Trump because they, too, think brown and black people are criminals, should be deported, and should have their homes and families terrorized.
On the other hand, the implications of the reasoning that you are supporting your candidate on such grounds, that they are willing to speak their mind, is that it is somehow categorically separated from the vile, racist things they are actually saying and speaking their mind about. If only some other politician was courageous enough to show some backbone, buck the Establishment standards, and speak their mind, then that person would garner the support, not the racist.
Yet here we are. Clinton does what many of Trump’s supporters say the reason they are supporting Trump is: speaking her mind, not doing so in a PC way, but in an earnest, rather irreverent way.
And of course, everyone now is attacking her for doing what everyone claims Trump’s support is predicated upon.
The way they are coming at her, you would think they think she is better-served staying silent and doing nothing as her character and a reputation built by years of service and sacrifice are decimated by fake scandal after fake scandal.
Of course, she’s doing what Trump does, but she’s not saying what he’s saying. Instead, the rhetoric is aimed at them, rather than the usual others; and she’s not saying hateful and stereotypical things about all the brown peoples.
Clinton has just decimated the last defensible reason people had for why they support Trump. It is because of what he is saying, not how he says it. Drill down past the irreverence, the everyman appeal, what Trump is saying is that all you disaffected white people are in the right for blaming Mexicans and other brown people for your woes. You are right for demonizing people of Middle Eastern descent and blaming all their aggressions on their religion. This is what Trump is saying that is the real reason they love him, but they know they can’t just come out and say that. That is why we have always had to contend with this nonsense that his support is somehow driven by his penchant for “saying what we’re all thinking.” Well, now Clinton is doing just that, and somehow her doing it is awful. But it’s ok if you’re Trump. Or a man. Or directing it at Muslims, Mexicans, and Gold Star parents. Or maybe it shouldn’t be ok at all. Fine, but then apply that consistently.
If these people want to stand up there and come after Clinton for speaking her mind, then at the same time, if they want to claim any sort of intellectual honesty, they must also admit that they are standing up and backing a candidate who has been doing the exact same thing for far longer, and the only reason they support Trump, is not because he is an irreverent outsider bucking the Establishment credo, but it is simply because he is saying the hateful things they themselves secretly or-not-so-secretly believe.
Of course, they probably won’t admit it. And yet, they also don’t even need to. It goes without saying.