Donald Trump has several trends that have remained fairly constant throughout his campaigning process. The first, is his ongoing support base of white middle class voters. The second being his strong views regarding immigration and trade deals. The relationship between the this demographic and the repeated call to “build the wall” can be linked in the root of the insecurities and anxiety of the white working class and Trump’s strategic approach to capitalize on this white fear .
In this breakdown published by CNN, Trump supporters are said to be more than twice as likely than non-Trump supporters to believe that their lives have been negatively impacted by immigrants working in the US. The study also shows that 62% of Trump supporters think that latin american immigrants take jobs from americans and in addition 60% state that they think latin american immigrants add to the crime problem. This is demonstrating a high level of anxiety about the future of america with regarding immigration. If immigration trends continue as is, it is projected that the white working class will become a minority majority and that people of color will be the majority by 2030 which given that the white working class demographic fears will cause their job loss and crime seems quite threatening.
Trump takes full advantage of this fear of the immigrant population in America by continuously stating in such harsh ways that he will “build a wall” to help the white working class visualize how he would stop this trend in the most tangible way possible. By doing this, he is not using a logical approach to attract these voters , but rather he is using an emotional one which as discussed in class is proven to be very effective in generating support. In this campaign, Trump is already utilizing a wall, the huge white wall of american fear and insecurities.
This was a really good analysis of how Trump is taking advantage of the already rooted fear of working-class Americans and building a campaign on it just like the wall. I was impressed by your outlook on his emotional approach to get working class Americans on board with his campaign. Also, it is clear that he is being illogical in his statements by gaining support based on the anxiety that comes along with the prediction that people of color will be the majority in the future. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will be taking the jobs, but Trump uses it to his advantage. Lastly, building a campaign based on fear is risky, but it has gotten a lot of people to go along with it.