One issue puzzling former President Barack Obama is why populist Republicans rallied around Donald Trump as their champion.
Obama outlined his confusion in volume one of his memoirs and at length with the Atlantic editor Jeffery Goldberg, noting America’s cultural heroes were traditionally represented by John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, and Clint Eastwood.
The “code of masculinity” represented by those cultural figures, Obama said, was that a man was true to his word, takes responsibility, does not complain, and is not a bully.
The “greatest generation” Obama said, was heralded for their sacrifices during World War II.
“Even if you are someone who is annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarchy, I thought that the model wouldn’t be Richie Rich—the complaining, lying, doesn’t-take-responsibility-for-anything type of figure,” Obama said, referring to Trump.
Obama proposed Trump had “complete disdain for ordinary people” but then received attention from those same people.
“[I]f we were going to have a right-wing populist in this country, I would have expected somebody a little more appealing,” he said.
Obama admitted Trump increased his support among black men because rap music was “all about the bling, the women, the money.”
“A lot of rap videos are using the same measures of what it means to be successful as Donald Trump is,” Obama mused. “Everything is gold-plated. That insinuates itself and seeps into the culture.”
Shows like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ Obama said, drove a sense in America that “either you’ve got it or you’re a loser.”
“Donald Trump epitomizes that cultural movement that is deeply ingrained now in American culture,” he said.
Obama mused he never understood Trump because he never watched reality television.
“I think that indicates the power of television in the culture that sometimes I miss because I don’t watch a lot of TV,” he said. “I certainly don’t watch reality shows. And sometimes I’d miss things that were phenomena. But I thought there was a shift there. I write about it to some degree.”