The Myth of the Redneck Trump Voter

Or, when gaslighting backfires.

Ever since Killary put [half of] Trump supporters into what she famously dubbed a “basket of deplorables,” the Ignorant, Hillbilly Trump Voter trope persists. Embodied in a single person, his name would be Earl and he’s a die-hard fan of football, freedom, and firearms—not necessarily in that order. He owns a TV only to watch NASCAR and hasn’t picked up a newspaper in decades. After he washes his pork ribs and Cheeto pie down with some homemade moonshine, he wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his “Don't Tread on Me” hoodie, throws his dog Cooter into the bed of his pickup and heads to the KKK rally downtown. (He takes Cooter pert near erywhere these days, on accounta them illegals eatin’ the damn critters.) He’s convinced Trump will not only save the country but would personally come over to help him fix his lawnmower if he asked.

The ostensibly prestigious New Yorker, known for its iconic cartoons, sophisticated writing, and scathing cultural critique, recently attempted to unmask Earl and his dimwitted kinfolk for its highfalutin readers.

TL; DR: You’re dumb because you don’t watch CNN.

From the comically one-dimensional piece:

In April, NBC News released the results of a poll that looked at how a thousand respondents consumed political news, and how they planned to vote. At the time, Biden was the overwhelming favorite among people who read newspapers, watched network news, and followed online news sites. Trump, meanwhile, led among those who frequently got their information from social media, cable news, and YouTube. The poll also showed that Trump most dominated among a subset of people described as “low-information voters.” Definitions of this group vary among experts, some of whom begin by pointing to the ubiquity of ignorance.

“Trump’s whole playbook was to attract these people,” insisted Richard Fording, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Low-information voters, he found, are more likely to embrace stereotypes of other groups, and less likely to fact-check claims made by politicians. “Trump was kind of the perfect candidate for them,” he said.

After the “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, and voters largely stuck with Trump, Fording dug deeper into the low-information category. He came across a metric in psychology called the “need for cognition” scale. “A question that really caught my attention on the scale is an agree or disagree: ‘Thinking is not my idea of fun,’” Fording recalled. He and a colleague ran a study to see whether agreement with the statement correlated with support for Trump. It did.

In case you’re missing the flashing neon implication here, “low-information” means “not being informed by mainstream media.” The “experts” are essentially suggesting that Harris supporters are deep-diving, critical-thinking, research-obsessed, passionately informed voters who watch network news, while members of Team Trump just don’t like to think all that much. Maybe they’re strapping those MAGA hats on too tightly or something.

The piece goes on to quote a Wall Street Journal-reading Belgian native living in Georgia who is disgusted by the Trumpers around him. “Just this morning, a guy told me that the funeral homes see a lot of dead bodies from people who took a COVID vaccine. [Author’s note: They do! They really do!] He said that their blood thickens and becomes a string in their veins. [Author’s note: It does! It really does! Please see Laura Kasner’s brilliant Clotastrophe substack.] And they are told by the Biden government to keep it quiet. [Author’s note: I’m pretty sure this is no longer considered a conspiracy.] The same guy asked me a few months ago if I had noticed that many ‘illegals’ are very young. He said, ‘I wonder what the Democrats do with all these children.’ [Author’s note: The Biden-Harris administration “lost track of” 320,000 migrant children! It’s a legitimate question.] He believes that the Democratic Party is involved in organized pedophilia. [Author’s note: Um, maybe because they are?]”

When the so-called-journalist asked this uber-informed citizen where he could find Trump supporters, his reply was, “just go to the Walmart parking lot.”

So he did, where he found a “bearded white man in his sixties wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt with a felony on his record” who was quoted as saying, “I don’t got no TV or nothing,” and “Biden is a pedo.” The author next approached “a woman named Juanita who was pushing a cart loaded with watermelons,” and asked where she got her news. Her reply? “From the Bible.”

New Yorker Editor: No shit, she really said that? And you got it on tape? Christ, that’s money.

Curiously, The New Yorker must have missed the recent Media Research Center poll that found that Democrats are actually overwhelmingly clueless about where Harris stands on most critical policies: 71 percent of Democrats didn’t know that she has supported reparations for slavery; 86 percent didn’t know that she advocates giving death row inmates the right to vote; 73 percent had no idea that she was a co-sponsor of the radical Green New Deal, and 81 percent didn’t know she favors abolishing private health insurance.

“The border is the number two issue facing Americans — Democrats, Republicans alike are looking at the border being overrun and they’re horrified by what’s happening,” said Media Research Center president Brent Bozell. “With that in mind, 72 percent of Democrats didn’t know that as border czar, she had never once been to a conflict zone, and they’re actually pretending that she was never the border czar; 77 percent of Democrats didn’t know that she supports eliminating ICE, but here’s the big one, the one that jumped off the page to me, 74 percent of Democrats do not know that she is in favor of not making it a crime to cross the border illegally. Had they made their case to the American people on all of these things, saying, I believe these things, I believe that death row inmates ought to get the right to vote, I believe we need to eliminate the police, I believe we need to have open borders, I believe we need to take away your private health insurance. Had she made that argument, Donald Trump would be ahead by 30 points right now [emphasis mine].”

Despite the fact that polls have shown Trump voters are smarter and richer than the average American, the New York Daily News insists on calling them "bigots, bumpkins and rednecks." The New York Post refers to them as the "hillbilly class" and "white trash Americans." (I wonder what Elon Musk, Bobby Kennedy, Russel Brand, Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel, John Voight, and Ye think about that.)

If you ask me, the ignorant, “trailer trash MAGA” meme is exactly what led to Trump’s “surprise” win in 2016. Right up until Election Day, polls showed Clinton with a consistent and sizeable lead—likely because scores of secret Trump voters didn’t want to admit their support and risk being branded deplorable.

If the left keeps up the shaming and name-calling, maybe Earl and all of his beer bellied buddies will quietly usher Trump in for a “startling” second term. An ignorant, white trash deplorable can dream.

Tell me how ignorant you are (i.e. where you get your “news”) in the comments!