Donald Trump may have won the presidency in 2016 by accident, Hillary Clinton’s FBI last minute investigation, and the help of Russia in social media. 

However, in 2024, Trump won the presidency because his message of hate resonated with voters. That message had five carefully crafted messages, all of which drew on our darker instincts at a time when distrust of government was rising.

 The first framing Trump used was resentment. 

As the world became smaller with speedier travel in goods and services, our government, beginning as early as the Kennedy administration, set up a funding mechanism to retrain American workers who lost their jobs to technology, cheaper overseas labor and American companies relocating manufacturing, and profits, offshore. 

But the funding was less than meager, and the efforts to reskill workers were largely unsuccessful. NAFTA only made this crisis worse. Resentment for this careless loss entire categories of work became more and more widespread.

The second Trump argument was that self interest was the better path forward than e pluribus unum. Trump frames the world as winners and losers, then argues that he alone is the ultimate winner, and those who see the world as “everyone is out to take what you have from you” and view them as enemies, and any attack on them is justified.

The third attack Trump framed was impatience, that is, due to rules and regulations, laws and policies and bureaucracy in general, progress moved too slowly. The grievances of the few seemed, to Trump supporters, to bind the grievances of the many. On issue after issue, tolerance for the few seemed more supported by the government than resentment by the many. Trump promised he would solve their issues on Day One in office, a false claim as time has proven, but an appealing promise to those who believe government does not work in their interest.

Fourth, Trump very effectively attacked “The Other” — with The Other being women, Black people, trans kids or any non-white minority. His argument was that these Americans were holding the angry Americans back by stealing their jobs when they were clearly less qualified, supposedly just by being a minority. 

This allowed any white voter to embrace the idea that their economic problems were not their own, but were caused by a government that unfairly placed others ahead at every opportunity.

Finally, Trump identified immigrants as the ultimate evil. Politically, it was a smart, but inhumane, method of demonizing the poorest people on the planet. And there were too many immigrants crossing our southern border, helping Trump’s hatred argument find solid ground.

All of these attacks prevailed, and Trump won the 2024 election, but the real issues that are the foundation for Americans’ anger were not addressed by Trump at all.

Beginning in the Reagan administration, America started to minimize the social safety network, making food benefits harder for needy families to access, allowing housing to become an investor’s market, and making prices out of reach for many. While other democracies were providing generous family leave policies and meaningful unemployment support, successful re-skilling opportunities, and access to healthcare for all, America was reducing all the benefits of living together in a society for all.

And that drawback on the social safety net brought with it the genuine resentment of Americans who watched their nation fight needless wars and tax cuts for the rich, while ignoring the needs of a modern social contract.

Trump’s solutions will never be right for America, but hatred has an appeal that is hard to rebut.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.