Donald Trump–Trump supporters relationship

The Donald Trump–Trump supporters relationship is defined by a contradiction that the book treats as politically decisive: supporters claim to oppose the elite while placing Donald Trump, a billionaire plutocrat and senior member of the Ownership Class, in the presidency. Their attachment is therefore not described as an uprising against concentrated wealth, but as a relationship through which elite power is mistaken for popular rebellion and resentment is redirected toward cultural, racial, and political outsiders.

Identity and Basic Contradiction

The relationship begins with a dispute over what counts as the elite. George Carlin’s criticism of a rigged society ruled by wealthy owners is presented as entirely compatible with the book’s own argument. Yet supporters of Donald Trump are said to invoke Carlin while exempting Trump from the class he condemned. The book treats that exemption as the central absurdity of the relationship: a man who estimated his wealth at more than ten billion dollars, who refused to disclose his tax affairs to the people over whom he presided, and who possessed a vast property portfolio could hardly be placed outside the Ownership Class.

The contradiction is sharpened by Trump’s background. The book cites an estimate that he inherited around $300 million from his father and reports that he began with $40 million in 1974, when he took over his father’s real-estate company. It also notes that he nevertheless went bankrupt six times. These details are used to reject the image of Trump as a self-made outsider who defeated the elite on behalf of ordinary workers. In this account, he is instead a conspicuous product of inherited wealth, privilege, nepotism, and cronyism.

The Political Exchange

The relationship is also explained through the division between economic and political elites. Bernie Sanders is quoted as saying that Trump attracted people who felt abandoned by economic and political elites, and the book accepts that sense of abandonment as genuine. Its argument, however, is that the resulting alliance misidentified the source of the injury. Trump, a senior member of the economic elite, persuaded supporters that he was the enemy of the political elite, whether liberal or conservative, while remaining visibly part of the billionaire plutocratic order.

The book describes this as a manufactured two-elite system. One apparent elite is the liberal political, media, and cultural establishment; the other is the conservative economic and political elite represented by Trump. The conflict between them is presented as a pseudo-spat that conceals a common foundation in predatory capitalism and the interests of the 1%. Trump can therefore pose as an outsider while belonging simultaneously to the overarching Ownership Class and to the conservative political and media elite. Conservative media, including Fox News, is presented as part of the latter formation and as supportive of him.

The supporters’ position is consequently selective rather than consistently anti-elite. They are described as opposing the Mark Zuckerberg and Hillary Clinton elite while accepting the Koch Brothers and Donald Trump elite. In the book’s formulation, they do not reject elite rule itself; they reject particular elites associated with liberalism, cosmopolitanism, or cultural authority. Their political loyalty turns an economic hierarchy into a factional contest and allows the ruling order to survive behind competing labels.

Resentment, Hierarchy, and Belonging

Resentment is identified as the emotional engine of the relationship. Ken Wilber’s observation that Trump voters shared ressentiment toward cultural elites in government, universities, and the coastal regions is used to frame their motivation. The book then argues that this resentment was not directed against Trump’s class. Because supporters voted for a billionaire plutocrat, their anger was redirected downward, toward groups they regarded as beneath them.

The hierarchy described in the book is explicitly racialized. White conservative supporters are portrayed as willing to remain subject to a rich elite so long as they retain a higher position than Black and Hispanic people. Trump’s promises to restrict unwanted immigrants, build a wall against people described as rapists, support the police, and restore an earlier vision of American greatness are interpreted as dog whistles whose practical meaning is the restoration of white dominance. The relationship thus offers status compensation rather than economic emancipation: supporters may remain subordinate to wealthy masters while being promised superiority over racial and cultural outsiders.

This account recasts the conservative slave revolt as a revolt against lower-ranking slaves rather than against masters. The supporters are said not to seek the overthrow of the elite, but its affection. Donald Trump appears as the powerful figure who can select them, elevate them, and place them above other subordinated groups. Their attachment is consequently hierarchical and aspirational: they admire the elite, long to be led by it, and imagine freedom through identification with a master rather than through the abolition of mastery.

False Awakening and Elite Consent

The book names this condition a false awakening. Voting for Donald Trump is presented as a vivid but mistaken conviction that one has awakened politically, even though the act consolidates the power of the 1% and deepens its rule. The supporters believe they have broken through propaganda, yet their choice is said to reproduce the very order they think they are resisting. Their supposed awakening therefore functions as an ideological sleep sustained by the belief that Trump is outside the ruling order.

The relationship is described in terms of consent as well as deception. The 99% are portrayed as sufficiently attached to domination that they accept a billionaire as their president and then interpret that submission as rebellion. Trump’s supporters become, in the book’s harsh formulation, lackeys and puppets of the rich: their political action helps preserve the power of the Ownership Class. The relationship is not merely passive loyalty, because their votes actively provide legitimacy and governmental authority to the elite figure they follow.

The same pattern is extended through historical and cinematic analogies. The book calls the Trump insurgency a return of the Confederacy, based on racism, white supremacy, and ultra-plutocracy, and compares it to the world of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It also invokes They Live, in which a hidden elite signal creates false consciousness and prevents the masses from seeing their circumstances. The film is interpreted not as evidence of Jewish control or a literal conspiracy, but as a denunciation of yuppie followers of Ronald Reagan and unrestrained capitalism. These analogies give the Trump-supporter relationship the structure of an awakening story while simultaneously arguing that the supporters have mistaken ideological revelation for liberation.

Consequences and Evaluation

The book’s final judgment is that support for Donald Trump makes it impossible to claim allegiance to the 99% while opposing the 1%. A supporter of Trump is therefore represented as supporting the interests of the 1% and opposing the 99%, a position the text condemns as treason against the people. The relationship converts popular anger into an instrument of plutocratic power: the followers believe they are attacking the establishment, but their action places one of its most recognizable members in the White House.

The proposed alternative is not another faction of elite rule but the end of the elite system itself. The book calls for ending the power of the 1% and beginning the power of the 99%, while presenting the radical left and Jacobins as the only force that openly seeks the overthrow of the plutocratic elite. It also links this transformation to institutional measures such as a 100% inheritance tax, which would have prevented dynastic wealth from reproducing figures such as Trump. In that conclusion, the relationship between Trump and his supporters becomes a warning about how domination can be maintained through identification: the ruled defend the ruler because he promises them a privileged place within the hierarchy.