The following is an interview I gave after the election to a journalism student at City University, New York. His questions were precise and allowed me to answer very spontaneously and without filter.
CUNY: As someone who looks for political patterns what do you think led to the rise of Trump back in 2016?
Kroeger: The ultra conservative movement that eventually became the Tea Party which eventually became MAGA has always been in development, but it wasn’t mainstream until the Reagan Revolution. They did not call themselves anything yet, but far right conservatism was emboldened by Reagan’s nationalism and they received their primary objective from him when he said: “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”
From that moment on they embraced a cause to dismantle government and their bogeyman was taxes. Trickle Down economics was the engine.
And that created a wheel of confirmation bias. There is no sustained or effective “trickle down” and the middle and working class began to choke from the siphoning of their wages to the top. Reduced tax revenue reduces programs and services and the working class felt they weren’t being heard by government; solidifying the view that “government is the problem.”
In a brilliant move by Republicans in the mid 90s, as they worried about a shrinking base due to young progressives and stronger minorities, they created the “Contract With America” to make a promise to the American people, in theory, without specific policy, to defend their interests by shrinking the government that is ostensibly shrinking them.
They would capture state governments to build on a promise that a Republican controlled government was listening and would work for them. All the while, of course, filling their coffers through the trickle down paradigm which actually trickles up. The more power they built, the more they could pump money into state races to build a conservative infrastructure and gerrymander outcomes.
Obama then became the fuse that ignited their powder keg. A popular (Black) president could move government away from their interests and toward minorities and progressive ideas, and thus what sprang from the economically persecuted (eagerly joined by racists) during the 2008 campaign was- The Tea Party; extremists of the right who put a militant face of unity and strength on the original populist cause of Reagan era nationalism.
Donald Trump who had long entertained the idea of president from any party who could take him there, emerged as an icon of prosperity. His lack of values and his true story of inheritance and systemic privilege, was irrelevant to his image of power. Trump jumped in by championing and bankrolling the Birther Movement, embraced by the Tea Party, to discredit Obama.
Trump was recruited in 2014 as a Republican candidate. He took “Make America Great Again” from past conservative slogans and cleverly merchandised and branded “MAGA.”
He became the choice for the growing disenfranchised due to his unorthodox behavior and he endeared the working class as anti-establishment.
Even Trump didn’t expect to win in 2016 but when he did, he and his newly coined movement became the bedrock of the new Republican base because it won. Only now it was farther to the right than it was in the 80s; it was extreme conservatism with fever pitched nationalism.
CYNY: The country was very divided on Trump from 2017-2021 with polls on whether people approved of his performance being split. Was his response to the COVID pandemic you think the real reason he lost the 2020 election?
Kroeger: Trump’s presidency was a non-event beyond boasting and self-directed flattery and was an image failure the right could not, or would not, accept. But his inept handling of Covid was undeniable. When people were dying, losing jobs, supply chains are breaking and the economy is turning down, it became irrefutable that the person at the helm is not leading competently. Trump’s rambling, unfocused press conferences, touting Clorox and ultra-violet rays, were unconvincing and did little to bolster confidence.
American political history proves over and over that economics are issue #1 every election and loss of work in 2020 was at the top of American’s concerns.
CUNY: People were also very split on Biden’s run as president. What were the reasons not only Republican but independents and even other Democrats were unenthused about his run as president?
Kroeger: Biden was the target of a giant, well funded, well oiled, propaganda machine at the control of conservative winds. Fox News plays a huge role in playing upon short memories and from day one it was: “Look at Biden’s economy!” (never mind that he inherited falling metrics and job closings).
Immediately the “Propaganda Eco-system” as described by historian Heather Cox-Richardson, churned out: “Things were better under Trump!”(never mind that Biden’s stimulus was saving families and businesses) and it spun into confirmation bias with: “Look at this out of control inflation under Biden! It’s his spending!” (never mind that the economy stabilized, inflation went down and jobs were created). What people remember is- again- #1 economics: What am I paying for milk and eggs?
Biden and his supporters tried hard to make the rational case based on facts, but they fell on deaf ears in a behemoth echo chamber unreliant on a truth-based reality. People became angry at problems that didn’t exist, at least not in the fevered extreme being fed to them, and finally the optics of an aging president did little to comfort those on the fence.
CUNY: How did his performance lead to not only a rise in popularity for Trump but a rise in popularity for the Republican Party?
Kroeger: Trump was the frontrunner the moment he lost in 2020. Trump stayed front and center with his fabricated “steal” which was exactly what the cynical, suspicious, anti-government, conspiracy- theorizing Republicans wanted to hear and the propaganda machine whirred overtime to make the case that government once again betrayed working Americans. The machinery of mis/dis information also created an ideological enemy of good, hardworking , righteous Americans – anything “woke” which meant anyone outside of the face they see in the mirror.
CUNY: How do you think this led to both a win for Trump and Republicans to win both the House (presumably) and the Senate?
Kroeger: The result was a Red Wave. I was one of millions who believed Trump was so clearly unfit and unhinged and that Kamala Harris clearly represented the fresh air that everyone wanted, that there would be a sweep in the other direction. And we were wrong. Working Americans and more young Americans, and even minority voters, were not bothered by Trump’s failings, his crass rhetoric or rambling lies, they wanted the candidate who promised they’d make everything great again. And would do so immediately.
It’s a glass house that’s been built under Trump, but policy, even facts, are not what more than half of America was asking for. They wanted someone to promise results. That’s what Trump and the Propaganda Eco-System delivered.
Now we’ll see what happens when the people who despise government and are oath bound to mistrust it, are the government they dismantle.
