According to Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Donald Trump was reelected to the presidency because “whiteness is under threat.” Glaude argued that more than 76 million Americans cast their ballots in favor of Trump to protect white supremacy, and he’s not alone in this view. Since Election Day, political commentators across legacy media have echoed the same timeworn narrative: fascists, racists, and sexists have landed “Hitler” back in the White House.
This might have resonated with voters back in 2016 when Trump was elected through a technicality (i.e., the electoral college). At the time, journalists argued (some still do) that Trump was elected by white, working-class voters resentful of an elite class that prioritized identity politics over economic policy. But a lot has changed since then. What pundits haven’t yet realized is that, somewhere along the line, Independents, many of whom identify as politically “homeless,” co-opted the MAGA movement, transforming it from within.
One look at the shifting electorate illustrates my point. Trump saw unprecedented gains across nearly every demographic this election season. He captured 45% of the Hispanic vote, a stunning 13-point increase since 2020, while his support among black Americans has all but doubled. At the same time, the Democratic Party has shrunk to its lowest numbers since 2004, and nearly half of the country now identifies as Independent. What caused this seismic shift in the electorate seems rather obvious to me: wokeism, a far-left ideology intolerant of opposing viewpoints, transformed the Democratic Party into something unrecognizable, leading many of its members to walk away. As Bill Maher famously quipped in a 2022 episode of Real Time: “It’s not me who’s changed; it’s the Left.” According to David Brooks, MAGA similarly transformed the Republican Party. This explains why establishment Republicans like Dick Cheney chose to endorse Kamala Harris, and why lifelong Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk have joined the Trump administration. The parties simply aren’t what they used to be, and—surprise, surprise—neither are Trump supporters.
Alongside the rural, working-class voter you will now find a multi-ethnic, multi-class coalition of political Independents who have become increasingly aware of—and deeply opposed to—government corruption. It’s a grassroots movement fueled by independent journalists, like Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, who exposed years of collusion among big tech, big pharma, legacy media, and the US government. Their work has revealed that Covid-19 was almost certainly the result of a lab leak, and yet, the White House coerced Facebook to censor this hypothesis, labeling it as disinformation, while Anthony Fauci’s top scientific advisors lied to Congress about it, claiming the lab leak just wasn’t possible. Their investigations have also revealed that both the White House and FBI knew the Hunter Biden laptop story was true but pressured news corporations and social media companies to censor the content anyway. This fact was confirmed by the Twitter Files, Mark Zuckerberg’s public announcement, and the testimony of IRS whistleblowers who say that the DOJ, FBI, and IRS all knew the laptop was legitimate from the very beginning. Add to this years of misleading narratives about Trump, the most glaring of which is the “very fine people” hoax (repeated by Biden in the 2024 presidential debate, repeated by Harris in the presidential debate that followed, and repeated by Obama as recently as November 3rd) and you’ll begin to understand the logic behind Trump’s landslide victory. To put it simply, Americans are sick of government corruption.
To be sure, Trump is a rampant liar too, but there’s a considerable difference between a solitary liar (whose falsehoods are regularly exposed by legacy media) and a vast network of liars coordinating for political ends. The former is reckless; the latter is corrupt.
So I must disagree with Glaude and others who blame Trump’s reelection on the hateful prejudices of more than 76 million Americans—a view that seems increasingly out of touch. To understand why Trump won, readers should examine the independent journalism of Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others; they should stop labeling their neighbors as sexists, racists, and fascists without sufficient evidence; and, most of all, they should practice empathy, looking past their political commitments to understand the “Other,” an expanding group of American voters that now includes Republicans, Independents, and even former Democrats.