By most objective measurements, President Donald Trump is a promise breaker. From getting Mexico to pay for a border wall (or even building it) to full release of the files surrounding his former friend and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Trump has failed to deliver on many things. According to Politifact’s Promise tracker, Trump broke most of his promises (53 percent) in his first term. By comparison, former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama kept most of theirs in full or part, breaking only 34 percent and 23 percent respectively.
This is probably one reason Trump’s approval polls are at some of their lowest points. Last week, his net approval rating was -10.3, a personal record for unpopularity in his second term. A lot of people just haven’t gotten what they wanted from Trump.
However, Trump has kept the only promise that really mattered. It’s not something he’s said out loud. At least, not overtly, though you could argue that the entire Make America Great Again mindset revolves around this premise. It’s a nebulous Megazord of a promise built of vows to curb immigration, oppose DEI initiatives, roll back women’s rights, demonize LGBTQ+ people, and cut programs that give disabled people full access to society. The promise sits in the center like a black hole, discernible only by the effect it has on visible bodies.
White male supremacy and mediocrity are still in charge.
In 2015, the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton adopted the phrase “the future is female.” While it had been coined during the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s, it found new life as the first woman candidate for a major political party vied for the White House. On the left, there was a sense of movement. The first Black president was finishing his second term, same-sex couples had won the right to marry, and the final glass ceiling was possibly about to be shattered.
Some folks hated this phrase. They saw it as open gender war instead of the rise of women to parity with men because, you know, that’s what it means when men say that kind of thing. The prospect of a woman, especially one that had been portrayed in conservative media as a murderous witch for decades, suddenly being the boss of bosses scared the people who only had systemic privilege going for them.
Enter Trump, the first man in all of U.S. history to win the presidency with exactly zero public service background and a businessman who portrayed himself as a genius despite multiple bankruptcies. By all conventional measurements, he was unqualified to be president. Most people did not expect him to make it through the primaries against traditional candidates like Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Jeb Bush.
Trump, though, knew something they did not. Obama had handily beaten those types of politicians before because Sen. John McCain and Gov. Mitt Romney played the old game. They insisted on decorum, civility, and a contest of policy. America’s bigotry found less purchase in 2008 and 2012 because the white men at the top intentionally avoided stooping to that level (mostly). In a way, they were the last great proof of DEI: two very capable and qualified men were simply beaten by a better one in an even fight based on the stated principles of the country.
That fact stayed inside white male America like an ingrown and badly-infected toenail. It was clear that a fair fight meant less power for them in the future. As the old phrase goes, equality looks like oppression to the privileged. All they needed was someone who thinks fair play is losers.
Which brings us back to Trump. He started his political ascendancy as the birther-in-chief, harassing Obama over his birth certificate in a way that captured racist America’s heart. He only got worse from there, mocking a disabled reporter, calling Mexicans rapists, and other fascist tactics. There was hardly an offensive stereotype or outlandish conspiracy theory he would not wholeheartedly endorse, and in doing so he became the avatar of all the poison people had to suppress in the last two elections.
When he beat Clinton, Trump curb-stomped every anxiety about a changing America into oblivion. All sense of progress, all calls for men to do better and whites to check their privilege, were now inarguably in the back seat. It wasn’t just that a white man had won. It was that a vulgar, sloppy man with nothing even approaching the usual bonafides for the office had toppled a titan of Democratic politics. Trump was the nepo baby of the entire country’s bigoted past.
Then, he did it again against former Vice President Kamala Harris. Here was another woman, and one of color to boot, who embodied that future promised in 2015. It must have been like Jason Voorhees sitting up in the third act of a Friday the 13th flick. Biden’s election was a rebuke against Trumpism and MAGA that had stung so hard people literally stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep it from coming true. Losing to a Black and Asian woman after that was unacceptable, no matter how disastrous a first term or how many promises broken.
Even Trump’s failures are a big part of keeping this most important promise. No matter how many times he craters the stock market, how many wars he bumbles us near, or how many supporters are hurt by his shambolic policy decisions, he is still the president. He is in charge, not Clinton, not Harris, no matter their qualifications or his flaws.
The supremacy of mediocre white men is upheld and, sadly, for just enough of the country to sway an election, it’s the only promise that Trump needed to keep. His actions as president will keep the scales tipped that way for a generation at least.
