Kennedys and Knoxes pay a visit to Trump

by Josh Simons

A few weeks ago, a few of us decided to make the trip up to New Hampshire, about 100 miles north of Boston, to attend a Donald Trump rally and hear what the man himself had to say. If part of the point of studying in America is to acquire a sense of its diversity and complexity, not just to remain in the confines of Cambridge Mass, then it made sense to try to understand what was driving Trump and his supporters.

This is all the more so in the wake of Brexit, which has shown just how important some of Trump’s core talking points — immigration, trade, national identity — are in the British political context too.

Much of what Trump said we had all heard before: global trade undermining the wages and security of American jobs, a critique of the assumption among the Washington Elite that America can or should act as the world’s policeman, a clear view that immigration is a threat rather than an opportunity, and so on.

What was perhaps more interesting than hearing Trump was talking to his supporters. Many of them explained their concerns, how and why they had felt let down by Bush and Obama, and expected to be let down by Clinton, and why therefore they were behind Trump. Most — though not all — were not, it seemed, aptly described as deplorables. It was not a lesson any of us will easily forget.