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A neuropsychologist’s view on the four kinds of voters who will always back Trump

10 10
13.07.2024

In the days after Barack Obama’s election as US president in 2012, my wife and I found ourselves in the lounge of an elite New York club, after an awards dinner. The philanthropists who invited us were generous and hospitable, but as we settled on the sofa, a very rich woman turned and hissed, “Can you explain the liar that is Barack Hussein Obama?”

We cannot understand Donald Trump without appreciating the racial tension that divides the United States: that woman was as mystified about a black American president with a Muslim name as others are about Trump becoming president.

Trump’s personality has been widely analysed. We know that he is a convicted felon who confessed to molesting women, has no moral compass and is a ruthless narcissist. He lies repeatedly and in any other context would probably be one of many inmates with this personality profile who fill jails across the world.

This, however, is no longer the point, because Trump is more symptom than cause and his presidency serves the interests of at least four different groups.

1. JD Vance’s Hillbillies

JD Vance, author of the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, and who may well be the next vice-president of the USA, describes himself as “Scots-Irish” and his book documents the abjection of the poor whites of Appalachia, including his own violent alcoholic father, who moved his family to Middletown, Ohio for a well-paid job in a steel mill, only to see it close and send him into the chaos of poverty.

He documents his miserable “white trash” early life, with feckless, addicted parents and only a solid grandmother to bring him up and ultimately save him. He distinguishes his........

© The Irish Times


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