Political Categorization of Trumpism

Cutting through the media propaganda labels

Beginning with the iconic televised presidential debate of Nixon and Kennedy, national politics has become an electronic media game.

Madison Avenue techniques effective at branding and selling products to the mass public soon where adopted to brand and sell a candidate.

But the gutter blood-sport of politics took the a dark turn; instead of selling positive attributes of the favored candidate, the game shifted to the approach of negative branding the opponent.

Think about how this would play out for product advertising with Coke claiming Pepsi was made by white supremacists who injected toxic chemicals into the formula. Then blast this message through all the media channels to feed the brains of consumers who unsuspectingly adopt the narrative as fact.

Ironically most product companies know better than to slide down this dark path of competitive negative branding as part of their strategy to gain market share. However, the use of negative branding in politics has become the primary political strategy. It is disgusting and indicative of a great sickness, and corruption, of our democratic system. It makes the average voter uniformed of real facts and truth, but committed against and for candidates based on the influence of their repeated media feeds.

The most fantastic media negative political branding effort the free world has ever experience is that against Donald Trump. I have never-Trumper Republican friends that claim DJT is a Democrat. My liberal progressive friends claim he is a criminal fascist dictator right of Atilla the Hun. Other friends claim Trump is ignorant and unqualified for the position of President; that he has ideas that will not work and will do harm to humanity and their pagan natural world deities.

To cut through all this media-generated opinion, I took the approach to locate all Trump’s campaign platform material and assigned one of five labels:

Conservative - Generally meaning representing core traditional Republican values that might also align with conservative libertarian values.

Liberal - Generally meaning representing core traditional liberal progressive values.

Progressive - Ideas and positions that are forward-thinking and that have merit and possibly bipartisan appeal.

Fanciful - Ideas and positions that are fantastic and maybe lack practicality.

Politically Pragmatic - Ideas and positions that demonstrate Trump’s understanding of political realities.

Obviously my assignment of these labels are based on my own opinions and are subject to debate. One challenge with respect to the “Conservative” label is that the Republican party has shifted from being the party of big business, capitalism and defense spending to one dominated by working class voters that own more skepticism to these things. Also, traditional Republicans were those that support our national security apparatus; while today more Republicans see those agencies as being corrupted by political operatives and a danger to American rights and freedoms.

However, my attempt here was not to establish a detailed analysis of the correct ideological labels for each idea or position, but to paint a general overarching ideological picture of Donald Trump in our modern era of politics.

So here it goes:

Border crisis and immigration:

• CONSERVATIVE / /FANCIFUL - Launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, paid for with redirected military funds,

• CONSERVATIVE - Restore his 2019 “Remain in Mexico” program, which required asylum seekers at the U.S. border to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed

• CONSERVATIVE - End what he called “catch-and-release” and instead detain all migrants who are caught entering the United States without authorization or violating other immigration laws

• FANCIFUL - Deputize the U.S. National Guard and local law enforcement to help with rapid deportations, according to Reuters

• FANCIFUL - Enact travel bans denying entry to people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere else that threatens our security”

• FANCIFUL - Block Communists, Marxists and socialists from entering the U.S. and send deportation officers to “pro-Hamas” protests

• CONSERVATIVE / FANCIFUL - End “birthright” citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents

• CONSERVATIVE - End Biden’s immigration parole program and roll back Temporary Protected Status designations

• CONSERVATIVE - Try again to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly referred to as DACA

• CONSERVATIVE - Build more border fence/wall along the southwest border

Crime:

• CONSERVATIVE /FANCIFUL - Move homeless encampments out of cities

• CONSERVATIVE / FANCIFUL - Giving police more authority, deploy the military to fight the nation’s drug problem and impose the death penalty for convicted drug dealers

• CONSERVATIVE - Deliver record funding to hire and retrain police officers, strengthen qualified immunity and increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement

• CONSERVATIVE / FANCIFUL - Send federal prosecutors and the National Guard into high-crime communities.

Guns:

• CONSERVATIVE - Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Second Amendment.

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - After the May 24, 2022, Uvalde, Texas, shooting at Robb Elementary School, Trump called for “drastically” changing the nation’s approach to mental health and “a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools across this country” but dismissed calls for further firearm restrictions.

Israel and Palestine:

• CONSERVATIVE - He did follow through moving the US embassy to Jerusalem

• FANCIFUL - Suggested that the war will just have to “play out”

• CONSERVATIVE - Said during an October Fox News interview, “We need to protect Israel, there is no choice”

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Has positioned himself as a strong ally to Israel while being critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

• FANCIFUL - Told Israel’s intelligence agencies to “step up their game”

Russia-Ukraine:

• PROGRESSIVE - Called for a cease-fire in an official campaign statement

• FANCIFUL - Said he could “solve the conflict in a single day”

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - More generally suggests overhauling the State Department, the “defense bureaucracy” and intelligence services to fire who he called members of a “deep state”

Economy:

• CONSERVATIVE - (But maybe one of the key conflicts within the Republican Party with the upper 20% of income and wealth tending to protect their income and wealth that is assisted by globalist policies, but the bottom 80% being hammered by it). Promises “lower taxes, bigger paychecks, and more jobs for American workers” by enacting universal baseline tariffs that “reward domestic production” and tax foreign companies (like all of our trading partners do).

• CONSERVATIVE - Says he will lower interest rates

Education (interesting the scope of ideas and position on this topic):

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Says he would shut down the Department of Education and send education-related decision-making back to the states. Curricula, enrollment and other standards already lie with state and local agencies.

• CONSERVATIVE - Promotes allowing prayer in public schools

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Wants to adopt merit-based pay for teachers

• FANCIFUL - Allow parents to directly elect school principals.

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Push the federal government to give funding preference to states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure.

• CONERVATIVE - Said students would receive a “patriotic education” that would “teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now”

• CONSERVATIVE - Promote the “nuclear family” including “the roles of mothers and fathers” and the “things that make men and women different and unique.

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Provide federal funding so schools can hire trained gun owners to act as armed guards at schools

• CONSERVATIVE - Cut federal funding to schools teaching what he calls “critical race theory”

• CONSERVATIVE - Open civil rights investigations into school districts that engage in race-based discrimination.

Child Care:

• LIBERAL - Previously proposed cutting the Child Care and Development Block Grant for low-income families by $95 million, but ultimately signed a $2.37 billion increase into law instead.  Influenced by his daughter Ivanka.

• CONSERVATIVE - Wants to make it easier for Americans to raise children.

Rural Development:

• CONSERVATIVE - His administration’s 2018 federal budget was criticized by Democrats and the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry for cuts to rural housing subsidies and other programs

• LIBERAL (However, Trump has made it part of his platform to do more for rural communities to develop economic opportunity) He announced in 2020 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would invest $871 million to improve critical community facilities for rural residents in 43 states and Guam

China:

• FANCIFUL - “Completely eliminate” U.S. trade dependence on China

• PROGRESSIVE - Impose universal baseline tariffs on most foreign goods

• PROGRESSIVE (Considering what the pandemic taught us about essential goods) Adopt a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods

• PROGRESSIVE - Establish rules to stop U.S. companies from investing in China

• PROGRESSIVE - Ban federal contracts for any company that outsources to China

• CONSERVATIVE - Defend Tiawan from Chinese aggression.

Fentanyl and Opioids:

• PROGRESSIVE / FANCIFUL - Considers this one of the nation’s biggest crises.  Says he wants to “Impose a total naval embargo on cartels” 

• PROGRESSIVE - Designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations

• FANCIFUL - Order the Department of Defense to “inflict maximum damage” on cartel leadership and operations.

• PROGRESSIVE - Seek death penalty eligibility for cartel members and traffickers.

• CONSERVATIVE - Permanently designate fentanyl as a federally controlled substance

• CONSERVATIVE / LIBERAL / PROGRESSIVE - Threaten China with “a steep price” unless they work to end the export of fentanyl’s chemical precursors.

• PROGRESSIVE - Create partnerships to encourage companies to provide job opportunities and skills training to people recovering from addiction.

• PROGRESSIVE - Expand federal support for faith-based counseling, treatment and recovery programs.

• LIBERAL / PROGRESSIVE - Promised family leave to care for relatives trying to overcome addiction.

Climate Change:

• CONSERVATIVE - Claims he will end the Green New Deal atrocities” on his first day if reelected. The measure was never signed into law.

• CONSERVATIVE - Free up stores of oil for energy development

• CONSERVATIVE - Speed up approval of natural gas pipelines into the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York

• CONSERVATIVE - Exit the Paris Climate Agreement again. Trump previously pulled the U.S. from the agreement, but Biden rejoined upon taking office.

• CONSERVATIVE / PROGRESSIVE - Fight litigation from environmentalists that hamper growth and real estate development… especially needed housing. 

Social Security and Benefits to Seniors:

• POLITICALLY PRAGMATIC - Told Republicans in Congress not to cut “a single penny” from Medicare or Social Security

• CONSERVATIVE - Encouraged Republicans to focus their funding cuts on areas of “waste, fraud and abuse” in addition to programs dealing with foreign aid, immigration, climate change and LGBTQ rights.

• POLITICALLY PRAGMATIC - Said in a a campaign statement he would reduce the cost of prescription drugs and health insurance premiums.

Abortion:

• POLITICALLY PRAGMATIC - Wouldn’t say during a recent town hall whether he supports a federal abortion ban.

• CONSERVATIVE - Called the overturning of the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade “a great victory” during a CNN town hall.

My conclusion

Trump appears to fit the label of a progressive conservative.

Interestingly the first use of “progressive” in Presidential campaign labels was Teddy Roosevelt. Like Trump, Roosevelt had split the Republican Party during a transformational time. Like Trump, Roosevelt positioned himself as the anti-establishment Republican candidate; someone that would eliminate the common graft and money-power corruption that undermined attempts at good governance. And like Trump, T Roosevelt was relentlessly attacked by that establishment for the threat of his ideas and positions against the establishment.

Trump also embraces some ideas and position that should appeal to modern liberal progressives. Trump was a registered Democrat before he joined the Republican Party, so it would make sense that some of his ideas and positions would align with traditional Democrat values.

As the politics of negative branding through our copious media and tech channels enflame the electorate into a fit of opposition or support for Trump, or any other candidate, it is prudent to inventory the actual ideas and positions of the candidate to validate what we have been led to feel is synchronized with what is fact and truth.

Trump might be the most controversial presidential candidate in the history of the Great Experiment; but then we have never experienced such exploitation of negative branding through media feeds to influence the electorate that he is the devil incarnate. As with almost everything pushed through the media to sell political influence, we need to do a bit more homework to get to the real facts and truth for correctly branding our political choices.