This morning—and every morning since Jan. 20—if you turned on your TV, you were likely to hear pundits and experts talk about how Americans are fighting against, upset with and resisting the presidency of Donald Trump. (It has been a month and I still dry-heave when I say it.) The consensus from every media source—including this one—would have you believe that the entirety of the country is engaged in a national exercise in hand-wringing and pearl clutching in its disapproval of the Cantaloupe-Faced Killa.
After all, who could love the press-vilifying, tax-hiding, racist, rambling, anti-Semitic, alternative-fact-spewing, “alt-right”-supporting, Muslim-banning, Mexican-ejecting, immigrant-hating, intelligence-rejecting, bumbling, stumbling idiot with the nuclear football on the nightstand next to his Hitler speeches?
White people, that’s who.
I know. I know. There is always pushback whenever anyone utters the term “white people”—or, even worse, the dreaded pejorative “wypipo.” You can watch the tears well up in any white woman’s eyes when you remind her that most of them voted for the tiny-fingered fuckboy.
I do not use the term as an incendiary tool. That would be as racist as talking about people getting shot in the street, failing inner-city school systems, or law and order whenever anyone brought up black people. Only an unintelligent, rabid racist would do that. I use it as a demonstrable, evidence-based reality.
When you woke up this morning, aside from the Oscars blunder and the heinous incident of black-on-black crime this weekend (Nicki Minaj vs. Remy Ma), every news outlet in the country reported the results of recent polls that show historically low approval ratings for President Trump. Forty-eight percent of people surveyed disapprove of the job the Great Pumpkinhead is doing as president, the worst ever for a president during his first month in office. (Here’s a tip: You don’t want anyone to use the word “ever” next to the word “worst” when describing you. You’d much rather that they offered the caveat “since the Depression” or “since we started taking this poll.”)
While the poll numbers are disturbing for a man who hasn’t been on the job long enough to get a key to the employee break room, even more shocking is the 44 percent of Americans who approve of the job the president is doing. As one of the greatest, formerly black philosophers of our time once said: “How Sway?”
Representatives around the country won’t go meet their constituents because they’re afraid an MMA match might break out. Immigration agents are bamboozling police officers into helping them round up immigrants. Airport lobbies are so clogged with protesters that Sage Steele almost missed her flight and had to fly coach! How could anyone approve of the job the president is doing? Who are these people?
White people.
To be fair, when I say, “White people love Donald Trump,” I do not mean it in the same broad, unscientific way that one would say, “Black people can dance.” I mean it as an incontrovertible fact. I mean it as an absolute truth. According to every scientific poll released since Trump took office, a majority of white Americans think that Trump is doing just fine.
This is not split along political-party lines or region of the country. Last week’s NBC/Survey Monkey poll (pdf) showed that every racial demographic had a grossly unfavorable view of the Trump administration except one. He had a 75 percent disapproval rating with blacks and 67 percent disapproval among Hispanics, and 67 percent of Asians disliked his policies. But white people ...
When you dig into the numbers, they give you an even clearer view of who Trump’s supporters really are. A majority (58 percent) of white men give the president a thumbs-up—the only group in which Trump has net favorability ratings. While white women are the next-highest group of people patting the Donald on the back, they still largely disapprove of the job he’s doing (54 percent).
It is easy to look at numbers and zoom in even closer. Sixty-four percent of white people who live in rural areas rate Trump positively, as do 52 percent of whites in suburbs. Caucasians who live in urban areas, however, have an unfavorable view of the Cheeto-in-chief (61 percent). In fact, according to Pew Research data and NBC/Survey Monkey’s numbers, the more uneducated and white you are, the more you like Donald Trump.
So there you have it—a detailed, research-backed look into who the people are who still think Trump is doing a good job.
I know there are many tropes ascribed to black people. Even though the vast majority of black men have never committed a crime, when you hear the word “thug,” you imagine dark-skinned, intimidating, saggy-pants black men. And because of a few TV shows, the stereotypical image of the sassy, side-eyeing, aggressive and loud black woman may never go away. But when I hear the words “Trump supporter,” I imagine a good-ol’ country boy as dumb as a box of rocks riding around in the country with a Confederate flag in the back of his pickup truck and a “Make America Great Again” sticker on the bumper.
According to the numbers, only one of those impressions is right.