“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” – I’ve heard that expression most of my life. It may have originated with Anthony Weldon who wrote in his book The Court and Character of King James, in 1651: “The Italians having a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, it’s his fault; if twice, it’s my fault.’” And something has bugged me since November 2024: why did 77,303,568 Americans who lived through the first Trump presidency, especially the 6 January insurrection, vote for him in 2024? It’s not an easy question to answer but, what the heck, why not give it a try?
Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by 2.83 million – 62.9 million to Hilary Clinton’s 65.8 million. Turnout of eligible voters was 59.2%, meaning 40.8% didn’t bother to get off their big fat sofas. (Compare this to the 2016 Brexit turnout of 72%.) In 2020, Trump got drubbed, losing by over seven million votes, even though more people actually voted for him than in 2016. The reason? 2020 saw a 65.3% turnout. (Each percentage point represents about 2.4 million eligible voters.) In 2024, Trump finally won the popular vote, but only by whisker taking 49.81%.
The typical voter profile
Breaking down the electorate, out of registered voters 49% are Democrats of left leaning, 48% are Republicans or right leaning, and the rest are Independent or have not declared. Most Republicans vote GOP no matter who the candidate is; same with Democrats. Independents and no-shows decide the outcome of close elections. Trump won in 2024 because some Democrats and Independents joined the no-shows. Trump got roughly three million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. Harris got over six million fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020.
Trump voters are mainly white, mainly male, mainly non-college educated and they mainly identify as Christian. Pew Research Center reported that 78% of Trump voters in 2024 were white; 55% male; 77% Christian of whom 29% were evangelical; and 56% non-college educated.
Leaving aside the numbers, Trump initially appealed to certain groups. He said in his 2016 victory speech: “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”
Who are the forgotten men and women?
I spent the first 22 years of my life in Trump country among some of those forgotten men and women.
Joplin, Missouri, ‘Gateway to the Ozarks’ with a population of 38,000, was as segregated as Johannesburg, South Africa, when I was a kid. Even today, it has a white supremacist gang called the Joplin Honkies (or Honkeys).
We moved to Wichita, Kansas, when I was 10 years old. It was a stronghold of the rabidly anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS). One of my high school classmates was Karen Love whose father was a co-founder of JBS in Wichita, along with Fred Koch, father of the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers. A friend said: “Birchers believe there’s a Commie behind every tree, and view the whole world as a forest.” Kansans have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1936, except for 1964.
A vote against liberal condescension
Some who love Trump are bigots, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, and/or pistol-packing knuckle-draggers. Others can’t stand snooty, know-it-all liberals. One Trump supporter is reported as saying: “I’m just so sick of the people with their Priuses and their coexist stickers drinking their coffee coladas and wagging their finger at me.”
It’s not just politicians either, but also smarty pants celebrities, intellectuals and the ‘lamestream’ media. The mockery – being the butt of TV talk show host jokes, satirical sketches, and songs on YouTube portraying them as clueless – drives them more than ideology.
In January 2021, the BBC World Service went to Idaho, deep in the heart of Trump country for its programme, The Documentary. A Trump supporter said: “We felt we’ve been on the pointed end of the sword – elites telling us what to do. They felt like they were our intellectual superiors.” Another said: “Some folks are respectful; they know they aren’t going to share an opinion. There are other folks who think that if they yell louder or talk slower, that you’ll realize how dumb you are and you can change your opinion to match theirs.”
Votes for truthiness
Many Trump voters are fully immersed in what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness” – it’s not true but it ought to be true. An Idaho Trump loyalist told the BBC that she asked her friends: “Do you mean what you put up on social media?” They answered: “We want it to be true.”
Some voted for Trump calling him a “straight-shooter”, a guy who “tells it like it is”, ignoring 30,573 Trump misleading claims and outright lies between 2017 and 2021, according to The Washington Post.
Truthiness infects a good number of white Evangelicals who believe Trump is ‘the defender of the faith’ and buy Trump Bibles for $60 when they can get Gideon Bibles for free. During his first term, Trump attended church 14 times, while spending somewhere between 290 and 369 days at a golf course (sources vary, but fall in this range).
They don’t want to know about his adultery with porn stars, or being found guilty of sexually abusing E Jean Carroll.
Trump’s ratings keep falling
Seven months into Trump 2.0, the times they may be a-changin’. Trump’s overall approval rating has fallen 10 points to 38% since January, according to Pew Research (Gallup has it at 37% overall).This is the second lowest since the 1950s – with the lowest being 34% in Trump’s first term. Among Trump voters, his approval has also sunk 10 points since he took office. Only 34% think Trump cares about ‘ordinary people’. (Seems like he’s forgotten the forgotten people.) His approval has declined in every demographic group – gender, race, age, education.
Pew furthermore reports that Republican support for Trump’s policies has dropped percentage nine points since February. That 9% includes those who feel Trump has made the government worse since he took office. Some 8% are now less confident that he can deal with the Ukraine-Russia war. More than half of Americans doubt Trump’s ability to handle a range of issues: immigration, the economy, trade, tax policy, health care, natural disasters, and law enforcement. The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein haunts him day and night.
Won’t get fooled again?
The hard core MAGA cult believe Donald Trump can do no wrong, that he is their saviour and their retribution. But what about the rest of the 77 million that gave him a second term?
Maybe they will realise they got fooled when they have to pay $3 instead of $2 for their morning coffee on the way to work. Or their vacation flight is cancelled due to reductions in the number of air traffic controllers. Or when the fellow who took care of their yard for the last 20 years is now in Alligator Alcatraz. Or their rural hospital closes and they have to drive 70 miles (116km) in a medical emergency. Or their social security check doesn’t arrive and they don’t know how they’ll make it through the month. Or they see men in combat gear and masks outside their door.
At that point, they may say to themselves: “Dang! Trump fooled me twice.”
