Analyzing Trump's Mass Support

Summary

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff: Episode Summary – "Analyzing Trump's Mass Support" (Released June 10, 2025)

In this comprehensive episode of Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff, host Richard Wolff delves into pressing economic issues, examines political dynamics, and engages with expert insights to provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current economic landscape. The episode, titled "Analyzing Trump's Mass Support," features discussions on political figures, labor movements, the advertising industry, and an in-depth interview with Professor Arlie Hochschild regarding the support base of former President Donald Trump.

---

1. Senator Joni Ernst and Medicaid Cuts

Timestamp: [00:19] – [09:45]

Wolff initiates the episode by discussing Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate known for her substantial healthcare benefits as a senator. Despite her privileged position, Ernst supports significant cuts to the Medicaid program, a move that has sparked controversy.

Key Points:

• Medicaid Cuts: Senator Ernst supports massive reductions in Medicaid funding, which insures individuals who cannot afford expensive medical insurance based on their income.

• Public Backlash: During a Republican meeting in Iowa, Ernst faced hostility from supporters who were concerned that Medicaid cuts would lead to increased mortality among vulnerable populations. In response, she reportedly told the audience, “we're all going to die someday” ([02:30]).

• Economic and Ethical Concerns: Wolff criticizes Ernst’s stance, highlighting the United States' exorbitant healthcare costs compared to other nations. He argues that cutting Medicaid while simultaneously providing tax cuts for the wealthy exemplifies stark economic injustice: “What kind of country is this? No Christian ethics I ever heard of would justify doing this” ([08:00]).

• Systemic Critique: The discussion underscores the systemic issues in U.S. healthcare, emphasizing that such cuts exacerbate economic inequalities and contribute to the commodification of healthcare.

---

2. Connecticut Healthcare Workers and SEIU Settlement

Timestamp: [09:46] – [17:00]

Wolff shifts focus to labor movements, highlighting a significant development involving 8,000 healthcare workers in Connecticut represented by SEIU District 1199.

Key Points:

• Labor Negotiations: These healthcare workers reached a settlement on May 23rd during contract negotiations. The negotiations had threatened strikes affecting 51 nursing homes and 173 group homes, special needs schools, and other healthcare facilities.

• Collaborative Effort: Uniquely, employers collaborated with the union to pressure the government into reimbursing employers, enabling them to meet wage demands. The workers sought to increase their hourly wages from $18 to $22, with aspirations for a $30 an hour pay scale in the future.

• Government Role: Wolff praises the cooperative approach between employers and employees, suggesting that such collaboration is possible only with government support. He notes, “It was a remarkable moment of shared effort by employer and employee to do something” ([12:15]).

• Economic Inequality in Connecticut: Highlighting Connecticut’s affluence, Wolff points out that the top 1% earn an average of $2.5 million annually. He advocates for higher taxation of the wealthy to ensure fair compensation for healthcare workers and proper treatment for residents in care facilities.

• Broader Implications: This segment serves as a critique of the broader U.S. economic system, emphasizing the need for equitable policies that support both labor and vulnerable populations.

---

3. Critique of the Advertising Industry

Timestamp: [17:01] – [26:00]

The episode transitions to a critique of the advertising industry, where Wolff examines the ethical dimensions of advertising practices.

Key Points:

• Deceptive Practices: Wolff argues that advertising inherently involves dishonesty by exaggerating the positives and concealing the negatives of products. He illustrates this with examples like soap ads promising improved sex lives or soda ads suggesting social happiness on the beach.

• Impact on Communication: He contends that advertising corrupts genuine communication within communities and families by prioritizing profit over honesty: “Advertising is hustling you, lying to you about the good, hiding the bad to get money out of your wallet” ([23:30]).

• Capitalism’s Role: Wolff asserts that advertising was a capitalist invention, serving as a tool to manipulate consumer behavior for economic gain. He uses this critique to underline the broader failures of the capitalist system: “Capitalism invented advertising. And that's another reason why we can do better than the capitalist system” ([24:00]).

• Call for Better Systems: The segment concludes with a call to rethink and improve the systems of production and communication to foster more honest and ethical interactions.

---

4. Interview with Professor Arlie Hochschild: "Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right"

Timestamp: [26:01] – [30:49]

In the latter half of the episode, Wolff engages in a detailed conversation with Professor Arlie Hochschild, an expert in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Hochschild discusses her latest book, Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, which continues her exploration of the support base for the Trump administration.

Key Points:

• Research Focus: Hochschild builds on her previous work, specifically her book Strangers in Their Own Land, to understand the motivations and sentiments of the MAGA community. She emphasizes treating their perspectives with respect to gain genuine understanding.

• Strengthening of Support: When asked if support for Trump has intensified, Hochschild replies that in regions like eastern Kentucky’s 5th district, support has indeed deepened. She notes the community’s perception that Democrats offer no real alternatives, leading to increased reliance on Trump’s promises: “They see nothing for them on the Democratic side” ([18:30]).

• Tipping Points: Hochschild discusses the concept of “tipping points” in economic, democratic, and tonal aspects. Despite significant economic hardships, she observes that tipping points have not yet been reached; instead, communities are becoming more entrenched in their support for Trump: “These tipping points, to put it in a teaspoonful, no, I didn't hear objections” ([24:00]).

• Social Deserts and Vulnerability: She highlights the social decay in rural America, where declining industries and social structures have created “social deserts” ripe for the rise of charismatic leaders. The hollowing out of community institutions leads to increased vulnerability to extremist ideologies: “Radical groups, cults, you know, grow out of social deserts” ([22:00]).

• Hope and Renewable Energy: Despite pervasive economic struggles, Hochschild points to pockets of hope, such as community initiatives in Pikeville and widespread support for renewable energy, even among traditionally conservative populations: “In a shocking new survey... 92% of Democrats but 73% of Republicans said, yeah, we'd like that” ([26:30]).

• Continued Research: Hochschild confirms that her research is ongoing, with plans to further engage with Trump supporters to deepen understanding of their perspectives: “I am staying in touch with these folks so that we can come back to you in a few more months and get an update” ([30:11]).

---

Concluding Thoughts

Richard Wolff wraps up the episode by emphasizing the importance of understanding the economic and social underpinnings of political support. He encourages listeners to internalize the insights shared by Professor Hochschild to better grasp the complexities of the American electorate and the systemic issues at play.

Notable Quote:

• Wolff reflects on the necessity of understanding the roots of political allegiance: “It's an important wisdom to carry into whatever you think needs to be done in this country so you understand where our people actually are” ([30:40]).

---

Final Remarks

This episode of Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff offers a critical examination of current economic policies, labor dynamics, and political support structures. Through incisive analysis and expert interviews, Wolff provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the forces shaping the American economy and political landscape.

For those seeking further exploration, Wolff recommends his book Understanding Capitalism as a companion to the program, offering more comprehensive insights into the themes discussed.

---

Note: This summary intentionally omits advertisements, introductory remarks, and closing segments unrelated to the primary content to focus on the substantive discussions and analyses presented in the episode.

Transcript

[Richard Wolff]

Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I want to remind you, as usual, Charlie Fabian is awaiting messages from you about how we can make this program better, what you like, don't like, and so on. You can reach him at charlie.info438mail.com and as I also remind you, mostly we have a book that is a kind of companion to this program, a way to learn more about US Capitalism beyond the particular segments of each of these shows. It's called Understanding Capitalism. I wrote it, we released it this year. And I would urge you to consider using it as a way to get deeper into what we do on this program. If you like the program, I think you'll value the book. Okay, we're going to talk today about the senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst. We're going to talk about health care workers in the state of Connecticut, and then we're going to talk about the advertising business. In the second half of today's show, we'll be interviewing Professor Arlie Hochschild, who has written a new book which continues research she did in an earlier book in which she lives among interviews the people who are the base in support for the Trump administration, maybe call them the MAGA community, to try to understand why they feel and vote the way they do, sympathetic but driven, as you'll see, by a desire to understand what that's all about. Whether you like it or not is a separate matter. What Professor Hochschel does better than anyone I know is really understanding what is going on. And that's why she'll be with us in the second half of the show. Okay. We begin with Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. She is a Republican, and as a member of the United States Senate, she has one of the best medical care and medical insurance programs available to anybody working anywhere in the United States that she gets as a senator. She doesn't have to pay for it, but as a Republican member of the Senate, she is also, of course, voting on all kinds of issues these days, including the decision of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives to make massive cutswe're talking many, many millions of dollars cuts in the Medicaid program. That's the program in the United States that insures people who cannot afford an expensive medical insurance program based on the income that they earn. And she got into the news recently when she was trying to explain to a meeting in Iowa of Republicanshe's a member of that party, why she was supportive of making these huge cuts in the Medicaid program. And it turns out there were people in the audience, supporters of hers, we assume, who didn't like that and who shouted in the meeting that cutting Medicaid is going to kill significant numbers of people who will no longer be able to afford the medical care that keeps them alive when these cuts go through. Senator Ernst then did something which deserves the critical attention I'm giving it and many others in and out of the media did. She looked at these people with no sympathy whatsoever and said to them, we're all going to die someday. Or words to that effect. Okay, let's look at this. There are vast numbers of people being less well served by cuts in the veteran administration hospitals, by cuts in Medicare, Medicaid across the board. In other countries that have better, more comprehensive medical care systems than we are, no such cuts could be passed. The politicians there wouldn't dare in many of their countries, not all, but many. Why are we doing that here? When pressed by reporters who couldn't quite believe what she had just said, does she mean, well then, if you're poor, you die a little sooner? Who cares? Certainly what sounded like she meant. She then began the mantra that comes from the Trump this is only supposed to get rid of cheaters. People who get medical care and may not need it or are cheating the system. As most of you know, every system ever invented has people who cheat on it. You know the system we call marriage? Do people cheat? Uh huh. Do we get rid of marriage as a result? No. Do people cheat on their income tax? Yes. Do we therefore have no income tax? No. Cheating is a problem that you can address, as most bureaucracies and most programs, including Medicare and Medicaid have always done. They don't need a new burst of efficiency. They work at that all the time. As anyone familiar with these programs should know, this is all bs. They can't face what they are doing. Except Senator Ernstshe did face it. We all die sometimes. You'll just die a little sooner. We're going to save money on you. Say I, who has a better medical care program than you'll ever imagine, let alone get. Cause I'm a senator and you are someone I am going to help die sooner than they otherwise might. Wow. The United States has the highest health care costs of any country on earth by a lot. It's a scandal. The whole world knows it, except Americans. But if you have the highest health care, then you kind of owe it to the poor among you to help them pay for or the that's why we have Medicaid. What are you doing? Cutting it. And how dare you set yourself up as someone who can preside over dying. Do we have economic problems? Yeah, we do. Is it appropriate in the same political party and the same government of the United States that is perpetuating the tax cuts for corporations and the rich passed in December of 2017, is continuing them, which Mr. Trump is, and adding more tax cuts for corporations and the rich, which is what he's doing in his big beautiful tax then at the same time to take money away from the medical care for the poor. What kind of country is this? No Christian ethics I ever heard of would justify doing this. The face of fascism is floating in the air when these things happen. I want to turn next to 8,000 healthcare workers in Connecticut, the people who staff the nursing homes and the group homes. They're represented by SEIU District 1199. They reached a settlement on May 23rd in their contract negotiations. They had been set to strike 51 nursing homes and 173 group homes, special needs schools and other health care facilities. What's interesting about this strike is that the employers who own and operate the nursing homes and so forth worked together with the union to put pressure on the government because if the government would help reimburse these employers, they could meet the demands of the healthcare workers, which is to raise their salaries from $18 to $22 an hour, hopefully on the way to a $30 an hour pay scale in the years to come. It's a remarkable moment of shared effort by employer and employee to do something. But that only happens in this country if the government is there to help make that possible. And it was in Connecticut. And it is something every union and every private employer who gets reimbursed by the government ought to think about even more than they already do. It's an interesting story of the labor capital struggle and the role that the government can play. And it should in a state like Connecticut, usually ranking in the top three or four richest states in the union. The top 1% of the people in Connecticut average $2.5 million a year income. That state can tax those people, should tax those people so that those 8,000 workers get decent, low but decent pay and the tens of thousands of people in the nursing homes and get treated properly. In many states that won't happen. And that is a very damning critique of the United States. My final update today has to do with advertising. I want to talk to you about Advertising, because it is not appreciated in this country. How awful that institution really is. Let's go through it very quickly. Somebody wants to sell more goods. So what do they do? They go to an advertiser and they give money to the advertiser. Say, put our picture of our product up there on a billboard. Put an ad in the newspaper, Put an ad on television. Make us look as good as you can. And the advertiser takes the money and he puts an image up there of a happy young person enjoying the product, suggesting to you that if you buy that soap and use it, your sex life will get much better. Suggesting if you drink that soda, you will have many happy friends down there on the beach. You know the drill. You see it everywhere. But now let's look a little more carefully. The job of the advertiser is to hype whatever is good about the product. Hype may be something that's actually good, or make it up, it doesn't matter. And the same advertiser has a second hide whatever's bad about the project. The cigarette makes you very sophisticated. Yeah, but we won't talk about what it does to your lung. That's the story. Advertising is a way of communicating between people, but it's not honest, it's dishonest. It hypes people, real and imagined positives, and it hides negatives. If positive and negative are always intertwined, then honest communication faces both of them tells you the good, the bad, and what the overall opinion is based on. Facing the good and the bad. Advertising isn't about that. Advertising is hustling you, lying to you about the good, hiding the bad to get money out of your wallet. It corrupts the communication that every community, every family and every person depends on. Capitalism invented advertising. And that's another reason why we can do better than the capitalist system. Stay with me. We've come to the end of the first half. We'll be right back with our guest, Professor Arlie Hochschild. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to [e-mail] and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy, signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. I am very pleased and proud and honored to have on our show and before you as both viewers and listeners, my guest for today, Professor Arlie Hochschild, formerly of Berkeley University, University of California, Berkeley. She's been on the program before, some of you will remember that. But now I want to introduce her through her latest book, which is called Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right. It was selected by Barack Obama as one of his 10 favorite books of 2024 and was selected as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Equally important and in a way a precursor of this latest book was an earlier book, a few years earlier, a book called Strangers in Their Own Land. And this was a book that explored, as the new one does, what I would like to call a major part of the base of the MAGA movement and of the Trump administration and what Professor Arlie Hochschild did was to treat these people with the respect they deserve, to try to understand why they felt the way they did, why they acted politically in the way that they did. Whether you're for or against the Trump administration, this is a vitally important question to ask and there's no one better that I could think of to help us answer it. So first of all, Arlie, thank you very much for giving us a little bit of your time today. Let me jump right in and ask you, has the support for Mr. Trump, MAGA and all that he represents between the first presidential administration and this one, has it gotten stronger? Has it changed? You are in a remarkable position based on your in depth interviews. You're living with the people for extended periods of time that you're interviewing to give us your sense of where that community is of which Mr. Trump is an expression.

[Arlie Hochschild]

Thanks for the chance to be here, Rick, and thanks for this most basic question we should all ask. I've been going back to the people that I wrote about in Stolen Pride to ask them their response to the first hundred days of Donald Trump's second presidency. And they're actually so hard for me to actually take in, more dug in than before they and part of the reason is they see nothing for them on the Democratic side. When Harris was talking about the Middle class, this group of blue collar whites. And I'm studying, you know, the whitest and second poorest congressional district in eastern Kentucky. In this district. To listen to Harris was to say, oh, the middle class, they've just dropped out of the middle class. And the party of joy. No, they don't feel joy. What they feel is the anxiety. And so I was wondering, well, do these budget cuts which affect them the most? And 45% are on Medicaid. Donald Trump is cutting Medicaid, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, the va, all these cuts don't fade. You afraid of this coming? I wondered, is there a tipping point after which they're saying, hey, I, I didn't vote for this. I was looking for three tipping points. An economic tipping point, a democracy tipping point, and a tone tipping point. Because we're living in a tone of extreme fury and fear inspiring fury. So those three tipping points, to put it in a teaspoonful, no, I didn't hear objections. And I think part of that one man explained it to him, real Trump person. He said, well, no pain, no gain. The United States is like a sick patient and Donald Trump is the tariff doctor and he's going to cure us, but first with a little painful chemo. So no pain, no gain. And you know, we Appalachians, we've had a lot of pain. We're stoical, you know, us. And he didn't say that cynically. There are others that did talk to me, yeah, you know, you have to like the guy that's hurting you makes it better. But that was a major response. Now in this district where 80%, over 80% voted for Donald Trump three times the last 16, 20, 24, 45% didn't vote at all. And 20% voted Harris. So who are we talking about? We are talking about the, a part of this hard hit, coal, jobs, out, opiates. And that's the district that I'm focusing on, Kentucky 5. And so I asked around, what could the Democrats do? The Democrats being the most in real trouble, but the most plausible social entity to make a counter to Donald Trump. What could they do? And Rob Muzek, who's a pastor at University of Pikeville, small Protestant college there, he said, you know, we're hollowed out socially there. We used to have a lot of stores. We used to have, you know, the Kiwanis, the Masons, the Red Hatters and all that's gone. With the jobs out and young educated people out of this rural region, it's become a social desert, a kind of A loneliness problem. He said, I've had, you know, woman just said, oh, I don't open my door anymore because there drug problem outside her door. And young people, well, there's nothing to do around here. So what he's saying is that there is a giant repair job to be done in rural red America and that that's first order of business because, you.

[Richard Wolff]

Know.

[Arlie Hochschild]

Radical groups, cults, you know, grow out of social deserts. So we have to back up and look at the social vulnerability to a charismatic leader who's promising a better tomorrow. And I thought that was very wise. I then asked him, well, what is the most hopeful thing going on in Pikeville? He said, well, there's a guy who has young man who's a weather forecaster and tells you where the storm is going to be. And he also has organized volunteer help with storms. And of course in eastern Kentucky there have been tornadoes, there have been floods, and just as FEMA's been dismantled. And so there's, he's drawing a kind of local resourcefulness, which there is a lot of. Why don't the Democrats kind of encourage and get behind local efforts like that and add to it a green agenda? Because even in this coal district once based on, you know, us relying on coal, you know, we keep the lights on, we won World War I and II, coal is gone. And in that, what's left are sawed off mountains, 52 of them in Kentucky. But people are saying, wouldn't there be solar panels on those sawed off mountains? In other words, even in this area they're very pro green. And in a shocking new survey, it found when asked, would you like the United States to be the world leader in renewable energy, 92% of Democrats but 73% of Republicans said, yeah, we'd like that. So I think that's an opportunity for crossover and for winning the hearts and minds of people who have lost trust in the alternative to Donald Trump.

[Richard Wolff]

Arlie, can I push you? I know this is a difficult question. I want to go back to the very interesting point you made about the tipping points. And you said, clearly we're not there. Those tipping points have not been reached. But is the following true or am I mistaken? We're closer than we were before to them? No. Okay.

[Arlie Hochschild]

That's not what I came to see for this region.

[Richard Wolff]

So Mr. Trump has, at least from people like this, the freedom to continue more or less what he's doing?

[Arlie Hochschild]

That's the question. And I think from what I see, the yes, and the metaphor of the sick patient still prevails, is there.

[Richard Wolff]

Let me change and ask a question I hadn't asked before, but for some reason it's in my head. Is there concern of any kind about China? Does the existence of China figure into the thinking of the folks there, and if so, in what way?

[Arlie Hochschild]

Yeah, they're very afraid of China and feel they're being overtaken by China. In a way, they kind of envy China, but not seeing what about it they envy would be government support for renewable energy, for one, of course. So that is not part of what they see. They feel that Donald Trump, by what he's doing, is raising up power and is, in a way, imitating China. It's kind of, hey, how about Canada? How about the Greenland? You know, kind of an imperial imitation. They don't actually go for that particularly. They want their own, you know, station in life and relief from the distress of downward mobility. It's a loss story and they want to rise. So actually, yeah, they don't see that what Donald Trump is doing is dismantling our strengths. They don't see that.

[Richard Wolff]

Arlie, we're running out of time. Let me end with a question. Are you continuing this research? In other words, are you staying in touch with these folks so that we can come back to you in a few more months and get an update?

[Arlie Hochschild]

Yes, I am. And as a matter of fact, the most ardently Trump person that I was to me was full of paradoxes in the sense that he's actually for renewable energy. Right. This area. He suggested that all the people in my book get together over dinner in October, and I'm going back for that.

[Richard Wolff]

All right, so I'm going to remember that I made a note, and shortly after October, I'm going to be back to talk to you.

[Arlie Hochschild]

Great.

[Richard Wolff]

All right, very good. Thank you very, very much, Arlie. And to my audience, think about what we just heard. It's an important wisdom to carry into whatever you think needs to be done in this country so you understand where our people actually are. Thanks again, Professor Arlie Hochschild. My best to you, to Adam and your whole family, and to all of you, as usual. I look forward to speaking with you again next week.