Trump and Trump haters

Marian Finucane interviewed a Trump supporter, an Irishwoman living in Virginia, who is a member of the Virginia Women for Trump Group, on her RTE radio show this morning. The woman, a well-heeled Dubliner, by the sound of her, who is not a teenager and will have seen US Presidents come and go, was rational and reasonable. She was very conservative, as you would expect, intelligent and articulate. And well capable of arguing her case. I was particularly impressed by what she said about Trump and the widow of the army sergeant killed in action recently. She didn’t blame the widow for the row (fully empathizing with her grief, as Trump, in his blundering way, also tried to do) but was very critical of the Congresswoman for her involvement. Spot on. 

I think I heard her saying that Hilary Clinton won 58 counties in the Presidential election and Trump won 3,000 but I might have got that wrong. Ms. Finucane asked her about Trump’s tweets. Her response was that, before Trump, everyone was complaining about a lack of transparency in government. Trump uses Twitter, she said, to tell people what he thinks. True, but that doesn’t mean he always has to. A good leader keeps 90% of what is in his head to himself.

 

What was really interesting was the response of Ms. Finucane's panel when asked, by Marian, to comment on the woman’s views. The first member of the panel described the woman, to her face (as it were), as ignorant. She dealt with that. Another member of the panel said something even worse (I half missed it) forcing Ms. Finucane to step in and say “hold on a moment there”. It was vintage debate, Irish style – ignorant and intolerant although not by Marian, who did what an interviewer should do, ask the questions and let the interviewee answer without being insulted. Marian did say that the views the woman expressed are not normally heard on this side of the Atlantic, which is true. Some panelists extended the basic courtesy to the woman that is meant to be applied in debates but is absent where Trump is concerned (and indeed increasingly where elites are challenged). Trump is usually blamed for that but his opponents have matched him all the way. The intolerance of the elite is something we all have to live with whether it is forcing EU treaties down our throats whether we voted for them or not or coming up with parliamentary committees, whose decisions are made before they meet, to force through abortion. 

The arrogance and contempt of the US elite for ordinary people is what catapulted Trump into the White House (what will happen here, I wonder?) but there is no sign of the establishment here or anywhere else reflecting on that.