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Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Best Of Series Part 1: Psychology & Trump
00:29:01
This week on Economic Update, we take a look back at Donald Trump's first term as president through the lens of psychology with Dr. Harriet Fraad. She explains what could have led people to vote for him instead of the alternative, and provides a...
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- [00:19]
Richard Wolff
Today's episode is a little different than usual. It is a compilation of segments from previous episodes of of Economic Update that remain relevant for all of us today. And I hope it provides you with a fresh look at what's changed, how.
- [00:36]
Harriet Fraad
Far we've come and how far we haven't over the last decade.
- [00:41]
Richard Wolff
I'm very happy to announce again, for.
- [00:44]
Harriet Fraad
Those of you who may not have.
- [00:45]
Richard Wolff
Known that the first program each month is devoted to an interview that I have with Dr. Harriet Fraad.
- [00:53]
Harriet Fraad
So let's begin with a first question that is perhaps the most frequently received question that we get in this program these last few months. Now, how do you account as a psychological specialist, a professional, how do you account, knowing all you do for the election of Donald Trump, what happened in this society to produce that outcome? How do you think about it?
- [01:23]
Arlie Hochschild
Well, this is what I think. I think that so many blue collar women as well as white collar women, but particularly blue collar men and women voted for Trump because they found that the neoliberal type capitalists like Hillary Clinton and Obama promised them prosperity and didn't deliver. They were willing to go out on a limb and vote for somebody they wouldn't have voted for ever before, someone black, someone young, Obama, because he promised hope and change. And people were excited because they knew changes had to happen for them to have a fair shot at life. Well, they didn't get that hope and change there either, economically, although many more people are working, they're working at low wage jobs and they're never getting ahead. The word Alice represents where people are at in a vast majority of American cases, which is assets limited, income constrained and employed. They're working, they're working harder and harder and they're getting nowhere. So what should they do, what to do? They decided, okay, we've got to do something. We've got to go for somebody completely different out of the establishment. And they had two choices. One was Bernie Sanders, who as you said, is the most popular politician in America, according to the Huffington Post, according to Mother Jones and also according to Fox News, because he promised change. He said, I will attack the corporate profits and the profiteers that have denied you. I will attack the banks that have cheated you and I will allocate that money for the mass of Americans who have been cheated and depleted. Donald Trump did not mention specifically the bankers, but he said, I will attack the swamp that is full of your money.
- [03:38]
Harriet Fraad
That drain the swamp.
- [03:39]
Arlie Hochschild
I will drain the swamp which is Wall Street. And also Trump, like Bernie Sanders, spoke very compassionately about people's looted lives, that they couldn't make ends meet, that they were desperate, that the America that they hoped for in which they could have solid middle class lives was gone and through no fault of their hard working own. And he also intimated that the reason for this is that under Obama and Hillary Clinton, some people benefited while they suffered. And those people were minorities, women, gays and transgender Americans.
- [04:27]
Harriet Fraad
In other words, if I'm not understanding you, they saw those people's plight getting attention, getting some relief, even if not.
- [04:37]
Arlie Hochschild
Anywhere near as much while they suffered.
- [04:39]
Harriet Fraad
They felt excluded from all of this attention and relief.
- [04:42]
Arlie Hochschild
And they didn't know it wasn't the limits of it. They just saw, hey, they're getting. I'm not. They're getting attention, I'm not. One of them is in the White House, we're not. And they were angry and they didn't know they had two choices of where to go. One was Bernie Sanders and the other was Donald Trump. Well, Hillary Clinton's outfit, the Democratic National Committee, knifed Bernie in the back. They didn't give him the money he should have gotten as a Democrat. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was in charge, was rewarded by being Hillary Clinton's honorary campaign chair. So they switched, they switched to the other candidate. That didn't sound like business as usual, losing your life, right?
- [05:29]
Harriet Fraad
Same old, same old, same old. Let me just recap. So I understand your argument. Trump is elected out of a mixture of economic decline for the mass of people and a psychological anger in a sense that has been built up that this decline is not universal, that somehow women, African Americans, minorities have somehow been exempted, leaving a mass which is still the majority, although a shrinking one, of mostly white working class people upset that their economic situation is deteriorating. And even more, that they are the marginalized, the excluded, the discriminated against. Because you do, I think you tell me, but I feel the message coming from the folks that support Trump. We've been discriminated against and we are protesting in a way like the very groups we're angry at used to protest about their discrimination and still do.
- [06:43]
Arlie Hochschild
I mean, they are in Hillary Clinton's basket of deplorables. They suffer the shame of being cast as stupid rednecks. They suffer the shame of poverty, which is shamed in our culture and shame of food stamps. One in four children in the United States gets food stamps. They suffer that shame. And they feel that as transgender, gay and African American people can be proud, they want to because their lives matter. They feel, hey, wait a minute, my life doesn't matter. I am cast as an ignorant, bigoted redneck, and I'm shamed because I can't afford much.
- [07:29]
Harriet Fraad
And so Trump appeals as a kind of negation of that shame as the making America great again.
- [07:35]
Arlie Hochschild
I will make you great again. I will make white men great again.
- [07:40]
Harriet Fraad
You cut the coverage of 21 million people. You use the savings because you don't have to spend billions on that to get rid of the tax on rich people, the tax on people earning over a quarter of a million dollars a year that paid for it. So it's a wonderful gift to the richest people in America since only a tiny percentage get to it. So he's taking something important away from millions at the poor end, giving more to people at the top end, therefore.
- [08:13]
Richard Wolff
Worsening the inequality that you just told.
- [08:16]
Harriet Fraad
Us is part of the psychological upset of the very people he appealed to and won the support of.
- [08:25]
Richard Wolff
But I'm not done.
- [08:26]
Harriet Fraad
One more thing. He also saved so much money by not giving insurance at 21 million that he hoped he could therefore give a tax cut to corporations, which he's working on now. So that would help the rich as individuals and the biggest and the best businesses disproportionately at the expense. This is not a person who's addressing the inequality and the upset. It's a person who's increasing it, actually making it worse. Am I reading you right?
- [08:56]
Arlie Hochschild
He's totally increasing it and he's taking away the food out of children's mouths in order to do that. His proposed cuts to wic, the women and infants nutrition programs, which go to people even at 185% of poverty level, his followers means that instead of subsidizing fruits and vegetables, which allow pregnant women to have healthier pregnancies and allow children to survive better, he wants to cut those funds. And what does that mean? It means that children will be born with. These are the offshoots of inadequate nutrition when you're pregnant. Cleft palates, congenital heart failure, abdominal tears, and generally poor health. And that means that people will have to spend more time on childcare, which is not subsidized for their children, because they will be unhealthy. You're really taking the food from the.
- [10:06]
Harriet Fraad
Mouths of babes and making life more difficult.
- [10:09]
Arlie Hochschild
And making life more difficult from just those people, for just those people who supported Donald Trump because of their hope.
- [10:18]
Harriet Fraad
Of for change, for change.
- [10:20]
Arlie Hochschild
And now they're getting, you know, they jumped out of the frying pan into the fire of change, which is burning them up. The Cuts to Planned Parenthood, of which abortion is a tiny part of what Planned Parenthood does. Of what Planned Parenthood mainly does. Screenings. They do screenings for breast cancer, since 1 in 8American women get breast cancer. And if undetected, people will die. They do things like pap smears, which prevent you from getting uterine and cervical cancer. They do things like check for sti, sexually transmitted infections like hpv, which, if undetected, causes cancer. And these are all very proven things. So it means that you're basically condemning your followers to death. Millions and millions of American women go to Planned Parenthood across the United States in places where other clinics don't even.
- [11:24]
Harriet Fraad
Exist because they are either available where.
- [11:27]
Arlie Hochschild
Others are available, or they're cheaper, they're low cost.
- [11:30]
Richard Wolff
Right.
- [11:30]
Arlie Hochschild
And so that you're condemning them to death. Another way that. And he's particularly condemning women to death. And another way that he's condemning women to death, really injuring their survival is by cutting cuts to the domestic violence prevention programs and battered women's shelters. 1600 women a year conservatively die from being killed by their husbands or boyfriends through domestic battery. By taking away the battered women's shelters and the domestic violence prevention and making people aware this doesn't fly. You're condemning women to death, and you're also condemning parents. Children who suffer from or observe domestic violence are in terrible psychological shape. So are women who are beaten up. And he's also cutting the legal aid funds to help these women to get some kind of justice, as well as to help everybody else who isn't rich. You know, lawyers cost $300 an hour. Who can afford that to get justice? So that these are just three areas where he is condemning women often to death and hurting their children. And these are the women who voted and the men in these families who voted for Trump to have a better chance for themselves and their families.
- [13:01]
Harriet Fraad
Okay, you've made a powerful case. But now I have to ask you this sort of $64 billion question. You're suggesting that the kinds of accumulated economic and psychological wants and needs of the American people propelled into office. First Mr. Obama, who was a disappointment, and now Mr. Trump, a more extreme on the other end of the spectrum. And you're telling us much the same story is evolving. In other words, Mr. Betrayed, Mr. Trump is betraying hope and change. But whereas you might say for Obama, at least he didn't make it worse, he did a little bit that got better. That's right. Mr. Trump is with master, going backwards.
- [13:48]
Arlie Hochschild
Making it much worse.
- [13:50]
Harriet Fraad
Where is that going to take the United States of America over the next two or three years. What are we looking at when what you're telling us is an already politically explosive level of anger and upset and bitterness now, according to you, is about to get much, much worse.
- [14:13]
Arlie Hochschild
It is getting much worse. And a nice little example is they're spending $18 million extra to keep Barron Trump and Melania Trump at Trump Tower. They could restore those cuts. Of course it will take.
- [14:28]
Harriet Fraad
You mean if they didn't spend the.
- [14:29]
Arlie Hochschild
Money on, if they didn't spend the money to keep Barron in his private school until the end of the year, hundreds of thousands of other children in America, of children would be advantaged. Also, if you didn't spend 600 million on Trump's trips to Mar a Lago, with his travel expenses and his security, you'd save another 600 million. And this is just an example of the priorities that are getting people very angry.
- [15:02]
Richard Wolff
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 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. 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.
- [16:47]
Professor Arlie Hochschild
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, this is hard for me to actually take in, more dug in than before. 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 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 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 they, Aren't you afraid of this coming? I wondered, is there a tipping point after which they're saying, hey, 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 theory. So those three tipping points, to put it in a teaspoonful. No, I didn't, 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 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, of this hard hit. Coal jobs out, opiates in. 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've, 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 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 they're 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 know, 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, they've 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 2, 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.
- [24:52]
Richard Wolff
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?
- [25:13]
Professor Arlie Hochschild
No.
- [25:14]
Richard Wolff
Okay.
- [25:15]
Professor Arlie Hochschild
That's not what, what I came to see for this region.
- [25:23]
Richard Wolff
So Mr. Trump has, at least from people like this, the freedom to continue more or less what he's doing.
- [25:33]
Professor Arlie Hochschild
From what I see, the yes. And the metaphor of the sick patient still prevails is there.
- [25:44]
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?
- [26:05]
Professor 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. The 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.
- [27:30]
Richard Wolff
Arlie, we're running out of time, so 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?
- [27:46]
Professor 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.
- [28:15]
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.
- [28:23]
Professor Arlie Hochschild
Great.
- [28:24]
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.