Analyzing Trump's Popularity: A Conservative Roundtable

Personal reflections on the article and the current political climate

Trump is More Popular Than Ever

I’m hung up on this opinion piece published Friday, March 21, 2025, in the Times, “Trump Voters Love Him More Than Before. Four Conservative Columnists Pinpoint Why.” The format is roundtable interview style, led by Opinion Editor Parick Healy, posing questions to conservative columnists David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French, and Bret Stephens.

I’ve read the article twice, and by the time I summarize it in this post, it’ll be three total reads. Admittedly, I have no idea whether to award this discussion the platform that I’m giving it by centering a newsletter post around it. I suppose I take David Brooks as a significant enough figure in political opinion writing that he is somewhat a standard bearer. I like the structure of the discussion, which includes both bigger-picture analysis and reactions to individual policies. I don’t consume conservative media, so I don’t know to what extent the views of these columnists represent the majority of conservative thought, but like a lot of people who have expressed concerns about Trump’s pursuit of authoritarianism and the Republican dismissal of Democratic and Constitutional norms, I find myself preoccupied, if not obsessed, with diagnosing a movement that strikes me as anathema to the experiment that is American representative democracy.

Further, Trump himself is a man without character who has nevertheless gripped the party of the moral majority, including lip service to the rule of law and staunch support, often hawkish support, of a large Defense apparatus.

Trump and the MAGA movement belie these commitments at every turn. I relate to Pete Buttigieg on Colbert, “Freedom-loving Conservatives, Libertarians, where are you?!”

By the way, if you want to know what Buttigieg is up to, he recently launched his own Substack.

What the Hell is Going On?

Mayor Pete is tapping into the same open question that has kept many of us up at night: Why aren’t more Republicans standing up to this authoritarian decent? The longtime rally cries of free speech and small government that have characterized the GOP for as long as I’ve been active in politics have been hallowed out. Legal immigrants detained, people stopped at airports and their phones searched for anything critical of the Trump administration, classifying legal protest at Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism…

What the hell is going on?

My fear of being detained for posts like this one is not zero. Growing up in conservative Indiana, I’ve long known that my political beliefs could put me in tension with neighbors, but I’ve never worried that they’d land me in a detention camp—until this month. I am trying to thread the needle here between urgency and alarm. I do think this moment calls for an urgent engagement, but I don’t want to be alarmist with my speech. Yet, the detention of green card holders and the expulsion/deportation of legal immigrants warrant concern, to put it mildly.

And it is not only the assault on freedoms that concerns me. It is the mass cognitive dissonance we are all experiencing as our country feels more like Hungary every day. Yet, Republicans continue to be on board with not only Trump but his Hungarian counterpart, the anti-democratic Orban:

The two-day CPAC event in Hungary underscores U.S. conservatives’ growing embrace of the Hungarian leader, who has been accused of dismantling democratic institutions, overseeing widespread official corruption and cracking down on critical media.

The dissonance is in the Right’s embrace of these authoritarian leaders, even Germany’s far-right, Neo-Nazi-affiliated AfD party; meanwhile, the media and our daily lives continue as though we are operating in a normal paradigm of partisanship. This is where the Times opinion piece comes in. What is the reaction in conservative circles right now? What might we learn from these four conservative columnists that shed light on the current moment? I guess, more pointedly, why have notable conservative politicians and intellectuals continued to stand with a clearly anti-democratic administration? Here, I turn to the article.

I’ll try to hit the key points in sufficient detail so that we can discuss them, but I also don’t want to merely copy and paste the round table. I encourage you to read the opinion for yourself. I’ll focus on applying my own critical lens to the discussion.

Republicans are Really Into Trump

Healy sets up the dialogue like this:

Donald Trump is the only president in our lifetimes who’s had a net-negative job approval rating in his first 100 days in office. Trump also has the largest gap in approval ratings in 80 years — 90 percent of Republicans like his performance, while only 4 percent of Democrats do. Those Trump supporters are really on board with him [emphasis in original].

Brokenism and the Wrecking Ball

“I’d start with the world we’ve been living in for the last decade or so,” begins Brooks. He cites polling data that suggests a majority of Americans have felt like the country is in decline. If your perspective is that we’re heading in the wrong direction, “then you’re going to be happy with a president who wields a wrecking ball.”

Personally, I think some things are broken and some things are OK, but most of my Trump-supporting friends are brokenists. They get this from media consumption.

Brooks connects this theory of “brokenism” and media consumption to a 2013 study about the Boston Marathon bombing that argued those who consumed media about the bombing had higher rates of anxiety than those who were physically at the sight of the bombing when it happened.

Vengeance

David French agrees with Brooks and ups the ante, so to speak. French acknowledges “sadly” that many Republicans want to see their opponents suffer:

They’re actually happy to see people lose their jobs or to see nonprofits lose funding if those people are perceived as part of the “deep state” or RINOs.

I think this is an important point that we’ll return to. Not to get ahead of myself, one of my takeaways from this article is the cruelty, vengeance, and retribution that all four columnists seem to uncritically accept about their own party. A “gleeful animosity,” Healy calls this. He acknowledges that Trump’s campaign slogan, “I am your retribution,” resonates with many voters. Ross Douthat permits this analysis, but he suggests a different motivator for Trump’s popularity: He, Trump, doubles down on issues that are perennial Republican concerns: immigration crack-down, de-regulation, tax cuts, and shrinking bureaucracy. Routhat observes, “we shouldn’t exaggerate the break [of some of Trumpo’s policies] or make a deep mystery of why Republican voters would react favorably to much of what he’s doing.”

The Disruptor in Chief

Bret Stephens amplifies this point: Tump is doing. The disruption in government is more important than what is being disrupted. This connects back to Brooks's diagnosis about brokenism and the wrecking ball. Voters want to see action! Relevant to our readers here, Stephens brings up Federalist No. 70 (we didn’t read that one, but I have it bookmarked for a future discussion about unitary executive theory). In that paper, Alexander Hamilton points to a desire for an “energetic executive.” American voters at large seem to prefer at least some consolidation of power in the Executive. In fact, paradoxically to me, I’ve had a couple of private interactions where others have resisted my strong endorsement of judicial review—that the president is accountable to the judiciary on matters of Constitutional interpretation. “A president was elected, unlike judges” is a general sentiment. It is truly surprising to me how many comments I’ve read from people who sincerely believe that especially a lower-level court should not have the authority to block a presidential order.

This smacks, to me at least, of the “run government like a business” ethos of conservatives. A business has a CEO who is the powerful decision-maker at the top of a hierarchical view of power. Certainly, Trump’s appeal as a businessman, despite a largely manufactured image, propelled him to office.

Stephens furthers his assertion that people like what Trump is doing with an assessment that what Trump is doing is finding some success. He cites improved border security and the dismantling of DEI programs as demonstrations of that success. “And I really don’t think the nation will miss the Department of Education when it’s gone,” concludes Stephens.

Biden’s Failures and Liberal Elitism

The panel discusses Biden’s failures with both the border and his response to international concerns, including the mishandling of the Houthis’ attacks on maritime trade. To some of these points, I certainly join the panel in criticism of the modern Democratic party, which allowed Biden to run in 2024 and has failed to mobilize its own populist movement around labor—this is the future of the left that I’d love to support: a pro-Union, pro-working class, social democratic movement of big-tent labor reclaiming the people’s power from the billionaire class.

All four columnists express their disapproval of liberal elitism:

Progressives really have spent the last few decades excluding conservative and working-class voices from a lot of institutions. Trump has gone after these institutions big time — the universities, the Department of Education, the State Department. Of course, the MAGA crowd feels justified revenge.

There’s that sentiment again: revenge.

I do appreciate this remark from French:

That’s why I sued so many universities during my litigation career, but always with an eye toward protecting constitutional rights, not denying them to my political opponents [my emphasis].

Trump’s Favorability

Healy stress tests three theories with the panel of Trump’s significant favorability among Republicans:

1. “Authoritarians are popular until they aren’t”

2. Honeymoon from the election

3. Nothing actually bad will happen from this dismantling of the administrative state, and in fact, this disruption will save America from the economic stagnation that we see in European countries that have embraced progressive policies

Douthat is the first to respond, and his take is first that the bottom will drop out from Trump’s popularity if the economy continues to suffer, and secondly, that most Americans reflect on Trump’s first term when sky-is-falling rhetoric never materialized in the collapse of democracy that people warned—and here we are again, with similar boy-cries-wolf commentary.

The Constitution

At this point, Healy begins driving at what I take to be the question of the hour:

Democrats and plenty of independents, and not a few judges, see illegality or evidence of it in some of Trump’s actions on federal spending, agency dismantlement, deportations, defiance of judicial rulings. Why do some conservatives see illegality differently?

The response is interesting: First, some of these matters of illegality are not totally settled by the courts, and where interpretive gray areas exist, it is natural for positions to split along partisan lines. Second, and here is another insight I gleaned from this article: COVID restrictions under liberal governance felt much more authoritarian than anything voters are (yet) experiencing under Trump.

The theme that emerges in this part of the discussion is also a distance that many voters feel from Washington, indeed, from international concerns generally. The panel agrees that things like the dismantling of USAID will result in the death of millions internationally, but outside of the Beltway, voters simply are not aware of or do not resonate with these outcomes.

On a similar note, irrespective of illegality, most Republicans simply do not think anything illegal has occurred. Broooks has this to say:

As a matter of principle, Democrats should be screaming bloody murder about Trump’s threat to the Constitution. As a matter of political tactics, I think they’re better off emphasizing Trumpian incompetence. Determining the constitutionality of some act requires a law degree, but incompetence is something we all recognize — and there is a lot of it.

Of course, I connected this analysis. My effort to get us reading Federalist Papers and the Constitution, which, yes, I’ve failed to stay on schedule!—is the praxis to Brooks’ theory: I’m screaming bloody murder about the attack on the Constitution!

I’ve personally been dismayed, if not bewildered, that Republican voters seem totally unburdened by clear and obvious violations of the Constitutional separation of powers, but here, I think we return to this distance from the government that many Americans experience.

Distance from Washington

What, then, may persuade them? French offers a helpful distinction between MAGA and Republicans:

It’s so important to distinguish between the core of MAGA — which dominates discourse online — from the bulk of voters who put Trump back in the White House. Online MAGA will pay any price and bear any burden for Trump; they’ll even buy electric cars to keep the DOGE dream alive. But the people who actually made him president were primarily concerned about prices, and it wasn’t close. If the economy tanks, MAGA will stay with Trump, but we know from the 2020 election that enough voters will step off the Trump train to swing the balance of power back to the Democrats.

The panel is sufficiently convinced that market corrections and even recessions are not inherently bad—that sometimes economic bubbles need to be pricked, but:

The problem is, trying to go about this by jacking up tariffs in incoherent and unpredictable ways is the worst possible way of pricking bubbles.

Lightning Round: Policy Review

Healy closed the discussion with a “lightning round” of individual policy reviews. Following are some more notable excerpts:

• “Of all the outrages of Trump’s first two months, his betrayal of Ukraine is likely to be the most consequential.”

• “Healy: Trump calling for the impeachment of that judge — and the notion of impeaching or disregarding judges generally whom Trump disagrees with.
  Stephens: Terrible.”

• “As usual, Trump is being patrimonialist — treating the U.S. government like his own family business.”

• “Government inefficiency and overregulation are very real and very serious problems, and Elon Musk is the wrong person to take on the challenge.”

• “Healy: Trump trying to ban transgender people from serving in the military, which a federal judge ruled as unconstitutional on Tuesday.
  Brooks: Pure cruelty.”

Closing Statements

Let’s conclude our review with a few of the closing statements from the discussants.

Douthat:

We are two months into the presidency, and we just lived through four years of dramatic global and domestic upheaval under a Democratic president whose manifest incapacity was deliberately concealed from the country. I have a million concerns about where this administration is going, but it’s a bit soon to attack the president’s supporters for being irrationally loyal.

Brooks:

Personally, I think Trump has set the world record for over-reading his mandate… But I wake up each morning and ask: What if I’m wrong? What if Trump wins the next four years? We’re entering an era of junkyard dog politics. Maybe Trump is the guy to stand up to Xi Jinping. Maybe governments need a pummeling cleanse before they can reinvent themselves. Maybe the vibe shift is permanent and the progressive march through the institutions is over. Maybe the American economy is a wonder to behold and it survives what Trump is throwing at it while our allies continue to stagnate.

French:

I completely agreed with the Democratic message that the rule of law was on the ballot in 2024, but I also know that voters will put up with an enormous amount of scandal and misconduct if the economy is strong and have no patience for corruption when the economy is weak. The “rule of law” is abstract. The price of eggs is concrete.

Stephens:

On most days since Trump took office, the line that has run through my head is from the movie “Airplane!”: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.” It’s just one damn thing after another.

But like David Brooks, I am a chastened Trump critic. I viewed his first term as a national embarrassment culminating in the epic disgrace of Jan. 6. Clearly, plenty of Americans didn’t see it my way, or they noticed things to which I was mostly indifferent: growing prosperity, a new attentiveness to the proverbial forgotten man — and the vapid, arrogant, hypocritical awfulness of many a Trump scold.

Wrapping Up

The two most obvious themes that rise to the surface for me when answering the question, Why is the anti-democratic demagogue so damned popular?

• Vengeance and retribution toward a Democratic party that seems hellbent on oppressing, controlling, and excluding conservatives in all facets of American life. I would connect this to growing frustration with “political correctness” and the perceived “moral superiority” of Dems who want to undermine “family values” and “commonsense.”

• Distance from discussions about the government’s function, its role, how our agencies serve Americans, international geopolitics, and high-minded critiques that are divorced from Americans’ lived experiences.

These present two opportunities for consideration. First, build relationships with your neighbors! It’s easy to want to get revenge on a talking head or see a group of people you disagree with suffer, but it’s much harder to see this happen to your neighbor.

A brain cancer research agency I’ve served for several years was just defunded under the March Continuing Resolution (CR). I had a lengthy conversation with a Republican neighbor about this, and they were surprised and saddened about this cut to medical research funding. They hadn’t heard anything about it and thought only that the government was “getting rid of DEI and woke.” Regardless of that stance on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I could share an article about the cuts to medical research, and my neighbor was responsive to my concerns.

And second, we must continue to articulate what we stand for. While I acknowledge the clear obligation I feel to stand up for marginalized people and combat policies that seek to deny their rights, we also must offer positive policy positions that reflect the everyday experience of many Americans. Refusing to engage in culture war debates, except where doing so is for the explicit protection of marginalized groups, we must continue to expose the class war that is playing out before our eyes.

No one benefits more from government subsidies than wealthy people and corporations. Articulating the government’s role in supporting a blue-collar, working class populace that benefits from consumer protection, labor protections, and access to social services is how we mobilize a movement against the owning class that is happy to see us tear ourselves apart by taking the bait of othering our neighbors and dehumanizing immigrants in search of opportunity.