On Wednesday, January 6, a line was drawn in the sand. Prior to that date, critics had unfairly criticized Trump supporters for being violent lunatics and fueled by resentment for four years, but could point to no evidence of that.
Yes, the 2017 march in Charlottesville was deadly and shocking, but the protesters involved in that event were white supremacists who opposed the removal of the Confederate statues. They were not there to support President Trump.
Then, on January 6, criticism was in favor, as thousands of Trump supporters, pushed by the president during a rally, surrounded the U.S. Capitol and stormed it as Congress tried to certify the election.
The riot that followed embarrassed our nation. The scenes were chaotic and horrific, with protesters breaking windows and knocking on doors, waving Confederate flags in the aisles of Congress, using leadership offices as selfie platforms. When it was all over, dozens of officers were injured and five people died.
The president did nothing to stop the massacre, other than inaccurately saying in a Twitter video that the election was stolen and that his people should return home.
Trump and the crowd have given their critics the proof they had always wanted. From now on, riots will forever be synonymous with Trumpism. Its populist platform, which had given voice and hope to working and marginalized people across the country, will now be discredited.
Jamie Roe, a Trump voter from Sterling Heights, Michigan, said any remaining goodwill toward the president evaporated Wednesday.
“He also had a chance to run again,” Roe said, about the speculation Trump could make for the president in 2024. “His brand is ruined. Ruined. He took everything he got and it he threw everything in. He had the opportunity to use his last weeks in office to boost the distribution of the vaccine and give people a chance to miss out on what he had achieved.Instead, he used it as a a month’s rage.
“What he did was a betrayal.”
I have covered Trump’s conservative populist coalition for more than five years, since he went down the golden escalator of the Trump Tower in August 2015 and announced his candidacy.
While the press that day focused on his unorthodox entry and his sharp words about illegal immigrants, people outside of elite circles heard a completely different message about restoring the dignity of work and the recovering their communities from despair.
While Trump continued to make cruel comments about minorities, Gold Star families, a disabled reporter, and Megyn Kelly, his appeal grew among working-class Democrats, independents, evangelical voters, and reluctant suburban Republicans. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose voters,” Trump said in 2016, before beating Hillary Clinton in a disgust that shocked the media, but not her supporters. Even after the siege of Capitol Hill, some voters still say they support it: a YouGov poll found that 45% of Republicans actively supported mafia actions, while 43% opposed it. And while a handful of Trump supporters told me they were still behind him because they have no one else to fight for them in DC, none of them will go on record.
Most of the Trump supporters I’ve met and interviewed over the years feel like Mike Martin from Erie County. “When he dies, he will probably not even have the president’s funeral. Will we even have a Trump presidential library? Probably not, ”said Martin, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Martin said none of his friends who voted for Trump supported him now, something he thought would never happen.
“All those years journalists would want to write the story of what Trump would do to lose the vote … well, they finally got their story,” he said. “And he has no one to blame more than himself.”
While the actions of a few should never tarnish the good intentions of many, this is exactly what will happen now.
“The vast majority of people were just there to hear the president speak,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from western Pennsylvania. “The president just went up there and incited them.”
Trump “has been feeding this for weeks and anyone with brains could have seen this coming,” Mikus added. “When you play with people’s emotions for a long time, especially if they’re vulnerable, you play with fire.”
For Roe, a Republican strategist, this moment is personal: “I had tears in my face. It’s heartbreaking as an American. I voted for this guy. I voted for him in the primaries in 2016. I voted for him in the general election twice.
“If you voted for him, there will be people who will put this on you.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s four years of good policies (Middle East peace agreements, tightening of trade with China, tax cuts, conservative appointments to the Supreme Court) will be tainted forever.
Roe has a say in what Trump did with his legacy and the reasonable, law-abiding Americans who believed in him: “Unconscious. Yes, he’s unconscious.”
Salena Zito is the co-author of “The Great Revolt: Within the Populist Coalition Remodeling American Politics” (Crown Forum), now out.