Introduction

Donald Trump delights in keeping people guessing. As he expressed on Twitter, “I love watching these poor, pathetic people (pundits) on television working so hard and so seriously to try and figure me out. They can’t!” Any astute observer of the president's political style, from the journalist to the scholar, confronts an irony as remarkably grand as the tycoon's real estate holdings. With a net worth of $3.1 billion, the president declares himself a protector and champion of working-class Americans against elites of all stripes. Throughout his private-sector career and now as president, he takes pains to disassociate himself from, if not consciously rebel against and antagonize, the economically well-to-do, insisting that he is an outcast among their ranks. Such rhetoric dates to three decades ago. When CNN's Larry King asked him if he were a George H. W. “Bush Republican” at the 1988 GOP Convention in Houston, Texas, Trump sanguinely replied “no” and maintained that

His perspective has changed little since. As he flirted with a run for the White House in 1999, Trump said, “Rich people who know me love me. Rich people who don't know me hate me. The working man loves me.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign and well into his first two years in office, Trump vigorously celebrated ordinary Americans—the middle class, blue-collar workers, manual laborers, and farmers.