Donald Trump is the Exorcist of Shame

And four other things I’ve learned about Mr. Trump, his core supporters, and myself

There are things you know, and there are things you learn. Most American politics is about knowing. It’s about certainty. Yet many of us are continuing to learn about ourselves and our country.

Here are five things I’ve learned this fall about Mr. Trump, his core supporters, and myself. As always, you’ll find fierce nuance. However, with the election less than two weeks away, this is no time to beat around the bush.

1. We’ve had 23,500 disqualifying revelations about Mr. Trump. None have disqualified him.

Donald Trump announced his run for President in June 2015. That means he’s been a candidate, President, or former President for over nine years. Over this period, there have been roughly 23,500 negative revelations about his character, decision making, and judgment. The Access Hollywood tape. Insulting John McCain and other captured or wounded veterans. Fomenting an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Casually watching the insurrection on TV. And 23,496 more.

Before the Trump era, any one of these revelations would have disqualified a candidate from office. In fact, lesser offenses had huge impacts. Remember people’s incensed reaction when Al Gore let out an audible sigh during a debate with George W. Bush?

Yet here we are, 23,500 revelations later. Mr. Trump remains atop the GOP. In two weeks, he may win the Presidency.

The standards for our nation’s highest office — at least for the Republican nominee — have radically diminished. This shift is one of the most astonishing political developments of my lifetime.

2. For Mr. Trump’s core supporters, criticism of him is an attack on them.

This point is about Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters. It’s not about people holding their noses while voting for him.

This point is not limited to those loyal supporters. All of us, at some point in our lives, get so emotionally identified with a candidate, product, organization, team, or celebrity that when people criticize them, we take it personally. This is how I felt a year ago around college football. During the “sign stealing” controversy, the University of Michigan football team and its head coach, Jim Harbaugh, came under withering assault. As a proud Maize and Blue fan, I not only found the criticism misplaced (because every team steals signs, just using video instead of a guy in the stands), but I took it personally. It felt like the critics were attacking me.

So when I say that Trump’s core supporters interpret criticism of him as a jab at them, I’m not singling them out.

Yet in the political arena, the stakes are far higher. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, taking things personally increases polarization, stifles reasonable discussion, and blocks learning.

In the case of Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters, it creates the conditions for violent events involving thousands of people, like what happened on January 6. It also prevents his nonviolent supporters from saying, “That’s wrong and it can’t happen again.” Instead, they circle the wagons. They line up to vote for him again.

So if I criticize Mr. Trump, his loyal followers take it as an attack on the MAGA tribe. On them. On their friends.

It’s personal.

Biologically, this makes sense. On a primal level, everyone needs to be part of a tribe. Tribes satisfy the brain’s need for relatedness and status. It feels wonderful to be in one. It makes many of life’s everyday pains a bit easier to tolerate. When people in MAGA see you wearing the red hat, they treat you like a cousin. Who doesn’t want to be treated like a cousin by strangers?

This has implications for the rest of us. We can’t prevent people from taking things personally, because each person generates their own emotions. Yet we can make distinctions. When criticizing Mr. Trump, we can say, over and over again until our hair falls out and the last dog dies, “I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about him.”

This is exhausting. I don’t always remember to do it. Yet it’s a vital civic act.

3. Mr. Trump is the Exorcist of Shame.

I’ve never been to a Trump rally, but if I did (and were a passionate supporter), here is what I imagine would happen.

Like everyone else on the planet, I can feel down about the circumstances of my life. My job is stressful. My marriage is strained. My kids don’t follow my directions. There are bills to pay. And then the car breaks down.

These events have a cumulative effect on my mood. I feel frustrated. Yet I was raised in a family that valued personal responsibility, so all of this seems like my fault. I feel shame.

Then I go to a Trump rally. He walks on stage with confidence and an air of mischief. He speaks. He jokes. It’s clear that he’s on my side and gets my troubles. Most importantly, he describes who and what are responsible for my pain. My name is not on the list.

Before long, the shame within me has been evicted. I am free. I am relieved.

When I look around the stands, I see that others are having a similar experience.

Mr. Trump has performed an exorcism of my shame.

Anyone who attacks him is attacking the man who has freed me of my shame. They are saying to me: you have no right to be relieved of your shame. You deserve your shame.

This hurts.

So the next time Mr. Trump is in town, I head back to the rally. And I receive a second exorcism.

4. A majority of ordinary Republican voters support MAGA/Trump.

There are many Republicans throughout the United States who can’t stomach Trump and the larger MAGA movement. For those guided by traditional small-c conservative values, it’s his unsavory character, lack of discipline, condemnation of veterans, and undermining of bedrock institutions and societal order. (For more on why Mr. Trump isn’t conservative, check out this recent episode of my podcast, How My View Grew). For people grounded in classical liberal values, it’s his attacks on the Constitution, the rule of law, free markets, immigration, and an open society.

I long assumed that at the grassroots level, this group was the majority — that the MAGA crowd, however loud, lived in the margins.

Sure, things were different at the national level. Here, I reasoned, MAGA is firmly planted. How else to explain that merely hours after the violent January 6 attack on the Capitol, a majority of Republicans in Congress voted against certifying the 2020 election? Meanwhile, the party activists who vote in primaries were clearly in Mr. Trump’s camp.

Yet I thought that average Republican voters were different. I thought that most were like many of the Republicans I grew up with. Sure, we disagreed on policies and even held different worldviews. But at least they appreciated the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law. At least they valued societal order above the violence of January 6.

I no longer think this.

What pushed me over the hump was a recent interview with long-time Republican strategist Sarah Longwell. For the past five years, Longwell, publisher of The Bullwark, has been holding focus groups across the country with ordinary Republican voters. Speaking with Bari Weiss on the Honestly podcast, Longwell reported that over 70 percent of everyday Republican voters are all-in with Mr. Trump and MAGA. In her view — again, she’s speaking as a long-time movement conservative—the GOP she grew up with and loved is gone. History.

That’s just one person’s take. And it doesn’t change the fact that I still love and respect the people in my life who are voting for Mr. Trump. But it suggests to me that not only they, but a vast majority of Republicans, are making what I assess to be a tragic error of judgment.

5. Mr. Trump’s personality still doesn’t bother me.

Several months ago, an old acquaintance wondered if I might have Trump Derangement Syndrome. This acquintance is a man who used to be progressive and is voting (again) for Mr. Trump. Many “on the left,” he said, are so consumed with Trump’s personality flaws, voice, and facial expressions that they can’t see the successes of his Presidency. Could this be happening to you?

It would’ve been easy to point out that the phrase “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a rhetorical technique aimed at silencing valid criticism of the former President. That it treats critique as a purely emotional act, one based on hysteria, not reason or evidence.

But I actually had a substantive response to his question.

The first thing I said to my acquaintance is that I’m not a man of the left. In fact, I’ve been a long-time critic of the shadow side of progressivism (and every other worldview present in our culture). I reminded him of my constructive critique of Robin DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility and my alarm at the rise of anti-semitism among progressives since October 7. No party or worldview has a monopoly on virtue. So, I thought to myself, please give your whataboutism a vacation.

Then, I reminded him of my e-book about Mr. Trump’s Enneagram (personality) type. And I explained how researching and writing this book had freed me of any “derangement syndrome,” because it forced me to be curious about what makes the man tick. It’s difficult to be deranged when you’re curious. Derangement involves certainty. Curiosity involves the absence of certainty.

I wrote the book early in 2017, shortly after Trump took office. I took on the project because several top Enneagram teachers had, in my judgment, mis-assessed Trump. This was partly because they hadn’t studied his life. Yet it was mostly because they weren’t familiar with adult development theory. Drawing solely on the Enneagram, they couldn’t see that his motivations drew not only from his Enneagram type but also from his developmental stage or action-logic. This mis-assessment bugged me. If you want to prevent someone from destroying your country, I thought, it’s useful to know what makes them tick. So I did my homework. I read two Trump biographies, studied interviews with his biographers, and even paged through the Doonsbury book about him.

The outer result of these efforts was a short e-book that may be the most detailed analysis of the Enneagram type of any political leader. (Yes, I’m bragging about this minor point of distinction).

On an inner level, the act of researching and writing the book changed my emotional relationship with Mr. Trump. His facial expressions and way of speaking no longer triggered me. No, I didn’t feel warmth in my heart for the man, but nor did I find his way of being threatening to my own psychological health. That’s because I had spent hours being curious about what makes him tick. This curiosity led to understanding. This understanding gave me a way to make sense of what I was seeing and hearing. What bothered me wasn’t his voice but its impact on others and the fact that so many people wanted to hear it.

Fast forward to the recent conversation with my acquaintance. When I explained all of this to him, he gave off no sign of being satisfied. And why should he have? I had just undermined his best explanation for why people oppose Mr. Trump.

Weary of the pointless prickly polarization? Ready for more fiercely nuanced stands? I can help.

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