Trump Goes to War Against His Own Supporters

There's a reason he doesn't care how many of his voters are harmed by the destruction of government.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

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Donald Trump is a man consumed with revenge; few things motivate him more than the thought of destroying someone he believes has wronged him, and significant parts of his presidency are being organized around personal vengeance.

But those on Trump’s long list of enemies are not the only ones who will feel his wrath. Trump is coming for his own supporters, in striking and brutal ways — breaking his promises to them, robbing them of benefits they earned and deserved, and bringing misery to the places where they live.

One might have thought that since Trump divides the world into friends and foes, he would shape government policy to favor those who supported him. That is not exactly what is occurring. He is certainly targeting whole populations for oppression — immigrants, LGBTQ people, the residents of blue states — but the help he gives is much more carefully targeted. While his administration will deliver largesse to specific individuals, businesses, and industries that grease his palm, the kind of policy changes he wants to make will do enormous damage to the millions of people who eagerly went to the polls to vote for him.

Trump’s voters were told for years that all their problems could be blamed on liberals: Whatever ailed them, their families, and their communities, it must be the fault of snooty college professors, urban minorities, or out-of-touch bureaucrats. They’re about to discover that those liberals were the only real friends they had.

The assault on his own voters has already begun

That may sound strange, but before I explain, let’s look at some of the things Trump and Republicans either have done or are planning to do in the coming days:

• In order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, Republicans are almost certain to enact drastic cuts to Medicaid, which now covers almost 80 million Americans. Some Republican members of Congress whose constituents rely on Medicaid are warning their leadership that cutting the program could be disastrous, but they will probably be overruled. Medicaid is particularly important to both individuals and hospitals in rural areas, which Trump won by large margins.

• Farmers and the communities they support were already hit hard by Trump’s attempt to shut down USAID, which buys billions of dollars worth of agricultural products from American farmers for distribution overseas. When he froze money for Biden-era programs including ones that split the cost of conservation and clean energy projects on farms, Trump left farmers holding the bag for loans they may not be able to pay now that the government has reneged on contracts they signed. Farmers will also be affected by the trade war Trump has begun; China, Canada, and Mexico are preparing retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural products. Trump acknowledged this in his address to Congress, saying “I love the farmer” but “it may be a little bit of an adjustment period.” He ended that section of his speech with, “So to our farmers, have a lot of fun.” These are just some of the ways the administration’s cuts are having a devastating impact in rural America.

• Trump has frozen money appropriated during the Biden administration for green energy projects, 80% of which flowed to Republican districts, especially in the South.

• Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce will have a particularly harsh effect on veterans, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2024 election. Because they are given preference in federal hiring, vets make up 30% of federal workers, though they are only 6% of the adult population. They are particularly numerous at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where the administration plans to fire 80,000 workers (“Perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment,” one of Trump’s aides explained when asked about fired vets). That will of course have a profoundly negative effect on the services the department provides.

• In his address to Congress, Trump included a bizarre and dishonest riff on fictional fraud in Social Security, a fairly obvious prelude to some kind of attempt to undermine the program (which Elon Musk calls a “Ponzi scheme”). The administration is closing Social Security offices that provide customer service and plans to slash the agency’s workforce in half, the result of which will be dramatically worsened service for recipients. In 2024, a majority of voters over 65 supported Trump.

That’s just a partial list, and it doesn’t include the fact that if Trump sets off a recession, as it now seems possible he will, it will harm everyone in the country, supporters and opponents alike. So why is he doing this?

One might argue that Trump enjoys abusing and humiliating those who kneel before him, which is certainly true on a personal level. But on a mass level, there may be something different going on.

First, he sees no risk in causing suffering among his supporters. And why would he? He just won an election, which he believes validates every political decision he has ever made. And he has seen again and again how he made promises to groups like the residents of coal country, broke those promises, and was rewarded with even greater support.

Second, while Trump does see the government as a means of distributing spoils, the transaction must benefit him personally; rewarding millions of voters (whose votes he won’t need again) is just too cumbersome. Take tariffs: Part of the point of imposing them is that one establishes a system to process requests for waivers, which can then be distributed to those who support Trump and his party financially. That’s what he did in his first term, and that’s what he’ll likely do in his second. And if you have a truly urgent request for something you want the government to do for you, you can pay $5 million for a one-on-one meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago.

Finally and most importantly, Trump and Republicans see the programs and institutions that benefit their own voters as fundamentally liberal and therefore necessary to destroy. And they’re right about those programs and institutions being liberal, in that they embody an ethic of caring and concern for all citizens, a belief that everyone deserves to have their basic needs met and their basic rights protected.

But the thing about programs that are built on those principles is that while they might express liberal ideas — everyone should have health insurance and retirement security, it’s good to have national parks, we should encourage green manufacturing — they don’t serve only liberals. If they did, they wouldn’t embody those liberal values. Not only do they serve a lot of conservatives, in many cases they help more conservatives than liberals, or conservative places more than liberal places.

That is at the heart of Trump’s war on his own followers: They cheer for him, but they depend on the government programs liberals built and liberals sustain. If sacrificing their wellbeing (or in some cases their very lives) is what it takes to destroy the government’s ability to serve the citizenry, that’s exactly what Trump, Musk, and Republicans will do.