In the uproar over country music star Shania Twain’s mildly pro-Trump remarks, a crucial point has been lost: Twain wasn’t endorsing President Trump’s character or even his policies, but rather his straightforward approach to politics. Criticism of her has glossed over this distinction, revealing how little liberals have learned from Trump’s election.
But let’s back up.
Over the weekend, the Guardian published a profile of Twain in which she was quoted as saying that had she been able to vote in the 2016 election (she’s Canadian) she would have voted for Trump.
“I would have voted for [Trump] because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest,” she said. “Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want bullshit.”
Twain’s nuanced praise of Trump quickly prompted a backlash on social media, with some fans vowing to boycott her upcoming concert tour. Twain soon apologized.
(In contrast to Twain, rapper Kanye West has responded to criticism of support he tweeted for a black Trump-supporting activist by telling a radio host that he “love[s] Donald Trump.” But West, an iconoclast who thrives on controversy, is the exception. Most pop culture mortals have learned that challenging progressive orthodoxy, especially on Trump, can be career-ending.)
Twain’s experience is just the latest example of a tiresome exercise that’s played out regularly since Trump’s election. A celebrity says something positive about Trump, which provokes howls of protest from liberals, which in turn prompts a full-throated apology from the shamed celebrity.
Twain has a large following in the gay community and many of her fans were outraged that she would vote for someone whose policies they see as anti-gay.
Fair enough. But Twain wasn’t endorsing Trump’s policies, only his forthright way of presenting them. “I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent,” she said. “And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?”
Twain was echoing the millions of voters who felt things had become so rotten in politics that their only option was to vote for the candidate who would at least give it to them straight.
And it’s hard to argue that Trump wasn’t honest about his intentions. He made it very clear during the 2016 campaign what he wanted to do: renegotiate trade deals, appoint conservative judges, repeal Obamacare, roll back regulations, reform the tax code, and, more than anything, build the wall. Trump has either accomplished or tried to accomplish all of those things.
This is in striking contrast to most politicians, who say the things they think they need to say to get elected and then veer away from them once in office.
President Barack Obama came to office promising bipartisanship, but soon abandoned that approach to push through Democratic priorities with little Republican input. Obama governed for most of his second term through what he called a pen-and-phone strategy. He used his phone to sign executive orders and his phone to rally interest groups in support of his policy agenda. The Republican-controlled Congress was left out in the cold.
Obama also promised to pursue comprehensive immigration reform by the end of his first term, but never even tried, angering millions of Hispanic voters.
Twain was also right about Trump’s character. Even most Trump voters don’t like that he’s a thin-skinned jerk with little regard for diplomatic conventions.
But there again, he never promised he’d be a statesman. It was Trump-supporting pundits, not Trump himself, who insisted he’d “grow” and become more presidential once in office.
Like it or not, what you see is what you get with Trump, both in terms of policy and personality. Or as my English dad put it about the Trump presidency, “It does exactly what it says on the tin.”
Instead of shaming anyone who offers even faint praise for Trump, his detractors should make an effort to better understand them. They could follow the example of Anthony Bourdain, who recently discussed why he chose West Virginia as the setting of an episode of his food and travel show “Parts Unknown.”
Bourdain prides himself on having an open mind when he travels to obscure places—whether it’s the Congo, Saudi Arabia or the heart of Trump’s America.
The people Bourdain met in West Virginia were very different from those he knew growing up in New York and New Jersey, he said. He was “utterly disarmed and very moved” by the kindness and generosity of the people, as well as their tolerance of his liberal political beliefs. They talked guns, coal, and religion. And he found their reasons for supporting Trump “more nuanced than I’d expected.”
Bourdain called the contempt with which liberals speak about Trump voters “disgraceful” and said people in his liberal circles could do with a little more empathy and understanding.
But empathy is in short supply among many of the president’s detractors. To them, the only acceptable Trump supporter is a former Trump supporter who’s been shamed into seeing the error of their ways.
Daniel Allott (@DanielAllott) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. Previously he was an author of the Examiner’s Race to 2020 project and deputy commentary editor at the Examiner.
