During the highly anticipated US elections, there were a few images of Donald Trump that became iconic. Trump wearing a high visibility bright orange garbage worker vest was seen in Wisconsin driving a garbage truck. The Make America Great Again themed garbage truck, Trump in the orange vest telling the press — “this is for Kamala and Biden” — was a peak trolling moment in the 2024 elections. He was responding to Biden calling all Trump supporters “garbage”.
This of course was only one of the almost comical yet critical moments in possibly the most watched elections in history. In a world where photographs have become a method of consuming news, the first assassination attempt on Trump was captured in dramatically powerful photographs of Trump with blood on his face, defiantly raising his fist in the air with the backdrop of the American flag. The picture immediately captured public imagination, pivoting Trump as a leader with courage to fight the culture wars that had become central to the US elections.
The culture wars in the US had heightened when Trump’s opposition failed to disqualify his presidential candidacy. There were at the very least 36 states where formal challenges had been filed against him contesting and three states where they disqualified him from the primary ballots. The Colorado Supreme Court invoked the insurrection clause to disqualify an ex-president, the very first time in the history of the US that a court has done so. The US Supreme Court happened to overturn the Colorado ruling but the sheer perseverance to somehow declare Trump ineligible to run for presidency continued with the slew of criminal and civil cases filed against him.
In 2023, 34 felony charges were brought against Trump by Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg, months later Trump had to face 40 criminal counts through the now infamous civil trial led by New York attorney general, Letitia James. She sued Trump and his adult sons for inflating the president’s net worth resulting in Trump being handed an unprecedented $454 million penalty. It had also been reported widely in mainstream media that efforts to ban Trump from the presidential race had been promoted and funded by politically vested donors such as George Soros through activist groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Free Speech for People (FSP).
Yet, Trump not only survived a second assassination attempt but managed to keep his wits about him. Like his articulate granddaughter Kai Trump said in her speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, “Even when he is going through all these court cases, he always asks me how I’m doing. He always encourages me to push myself to be the most successful person I can be.” In comparison, the Kamala Harris campaign was nothing more than a staggering $1 billion mess. Allegedly, millions were paid for concerts and celebrity endorsements. Even though many of them like Oprah Winfrey denied receiving a personal payment, but clarified that the money was towards technical and set design costs.
Even the likes of Taylor Swift, the world’s biggest popstar with a committed fan following called the “swifties”, could not save the Harris campaign. A campaign which is now mired in controversy after it was revealed that it has been left with a $20 million debt. Not a surprise considering $10 million was spent on jet services since July, nearly $4 million on an advertising company that connects clients to social media influencers and another $15 million on event management, amongst other remarkable expenses.
Large sums of money were spent to capture mainstream and social media with most American journalists becoming Democratic party activists. The frenzy that ensued was akin to an apocalyptic event prediction. And when Trump won, the shock that rattled the race, sexual orientation and gender warriors was nothing short of being unhinged. Celebrities who had endorsed Kamala Harris like Eva Longoria and Robert De Niro packed their bags to leave the country (or at least threatened to do so), as a protest against the mandate.
Though by the standards of Indian experience with similar alarmist campaigns based on democracy and the Constitution being in danger, the chances are these highly talented celebrities will reconsider their decision to leave the country. However, the irony of the situation is that it’s the same Democrats and their celebrity supporters who are the culture elites in the US. They controlled the media, academia while they wielded political power. Yet, the entire election was based on building a perception of being the revolutionaries fighting the fascists, saving democracy that would be in utter danger with the ascension of one man — Donald Trump.
Today, with Trump’s victory, ‘liberal’-leaning outlets are asking how the country could elect Trump again. If there was any sincerity in their entire rhetoric, it was certainly in the belief that Trump would not be re-elected, not in Harris being a strong candidate. The subsequent meltdown in the media and amongst Democrats pinned the blame on misogyny and racism. The American voter was slandered, not the candidate or the campaign managers, especially considering Democrat voters rejected Harris in 2019 without being called out for racism or misogyny.
For the truth to emerge, journalists, political analysts and politicians themselves have to extract themselves from the echo chambers that they have confined themselves to. In the US, like many other countries in the world, the major political media outlets and their ecosystems are based out of New York or Washington. There may not be much on offer for the culture elites in areas such as Northern Michigan or border towns of Texas or far-flung places like western Wisconsin, but the real sentiments are found where the culture elites fear to tread. Maybe if they were familiar with people outside of their ecosystems they would have realised that voters don’t necessarily see the world from the prism of race, gender or sexual orientation. There are real and present dangers that concern them such as inflation, illegal immigration and security.
Whether the culture elites believe that they missed the pulse of the people, the fact remains the common man is disenchanted with their rhetoric. According to Nielsen ratings, MSNBC has reported a 54 per cent decline in primetime viewership, CNN is down 44 per cent and is planning to fire over a hundred employees. MSNBC top hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough also paid a visit to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort for the first time in-person in seven years.
On the other hand, MSNBC’s rival Fox News has increased its viewership on primetime by 21 per cent since the election results were announced. Carlo Versano of Newsweek has reasoned that “The path of traditional media’s institutional collapse is really two intertwining stories: a breakdown of its business model exacerbated by a breakdown of influence, the extent of which became clear this campaign cycle… Behind it all lies a growing sense among Americans that the media cannot be trusted to tell them the news they believe is fair.”
It is the last line of Versano that needs to be understood in its entirety, not just by Americans but across the world of politics and media. The trust of the common man cannot be taken for granted, to use social media, mainstream media and influencers to cause panic will result in withdrawal and that culture wars only matter to the culture elites. Whether you like Trump or dislike him, it doesn’t matter anymore. Many Republicans themselves may not be happy with his victory on account of him not being a “true conservative” but what you can’t take away from him is that he endured the ‘liberal’ culture elite witch-hunt against him, came out the other side victorious and missed a bullet.
The photograph of Trump rising with blood on his face, fist in the air and the American flag in the backdrop has become the image of what a pushback to culture wars looks like.
Rami Niranjan Desai is an anthropologist and a scholar of the Northeast region of India. She is a columnist and author and presently Distinguished Fellow at India Foundation, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.