The last weeks of Donald Trump’s successful campaign for president were a festival of crudeness. In light of this, Tucker Carlson’s warm-up act at a Georgia rally late last month was, if notably creepy, still typical of the sunken depths of rhetoric. Carlson offered an extended metaphor in which Trump was an angry “dad” with a household of misbehaving children (a 2-year-old who has smeared “the contents of his diapers on the wall,” “a hormone-addled” 15-year-old girl who has decided to “slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger”). The children in this metaphor, if it wasn’t clear, are the citizens of this country.

“Dad comes home, and he’s pissed,” Carlson said to wild cheers. “He’s not vengeful; he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior, and he’s going to have to let them know.” Then came the grossest part: Carlson’s fantasy of Trump spanking “a bad little girl” as punishment.

What America did on Tuesday was elect that dad—vengeful, disappointed, erratic, and in the minds of his followers, benevolent.

A majority of voters preferred Trump, and likely for a variety of reasons; it may have been “the inflation, stupid” after all. But psychological forces also lie behind Trump’s appeal. Largely unexamined among these is the aura of paternalism exuded by the president-elect. Carlson, in his reptilian way, was getting at this idea in its most vulgar iteration. Trump wanted to be seen as a father figure for a nation he insisted needed discipline and defending. This felt like a role reversal from his 2016 persona: the class clown sitting in the back, lobbing spitballs at the establishment. If during his first administration he was a child dependent on “adults in the room” to make sure he didn’t fiddle with the nuclear code, this year he gave off the more assured air of an imposing patriarch in an overcoat; he’s been in the White House already and doesn’t need any help. This infused the slogan from his 2016 Republican National Convention, “I alone can fix it,” with new resonance eight years later.

[Read: Trump won. Now what?]

When Trump started using this line again, I immediately understood its efficacy. I have a fairly egalitarian marriage, yet a common refrain in my house, whenever something breaks, is “Aba will fix it” (my kids call me “Aba,” Hebrew for “dad”). My wife even laughs at how quickly our determination to avoid traditional gender roles breaks down if there is a dead bird in the backyard that needs to be disposed of or an IKEA shelf that has to be built. The notion of a dad who can—or at least will try to—“fix it” is deeply embedded in our cultural psyche, and not just among Americans who consider themselves conservative. Even for people who didn’t grow up with a father—maybe especially for those who didn’t—the longing for a mythical male protector can run deep. Just think of J. D. Vance, the vice-president-elect, who has written that the “revolving door of father figures” his mother would bring into his life was the worst part of his childhood. He longed for stability and firmness, and he has allied himself with a right-wing movement that aims to restore a “father knows best” nation of single-earner households tended to by stay-at-home moms.

Consciously or not, Trump exploited this desire, and he did so at a moment of deep economic and social flux in the country. He painted an exaggerated (and often fictional) portrait of a nation of vulnerable children menaced by murderous immigrants, one that requires a paterfamilias to provide a defense—and to guard their reproductive rights (he is, of course, the self-styled “father of IVF”). At a Wisconsin rally late last month, Trump described a conversation with his advisers in which he told them he wanted to use this sort of paternalistic language on the stump. They disagreed, according to his story, and told him it would be “very inappropriate” for him to say, for example, “I want to protect the women of our country.” To this, he responded: “Well, I’m going to do it—whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.”

Authoritarian leaders thrive on this kind of familial imagery. One of the most memorable photos of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is from 1936: He smiles as an apple-cheeked little girl named Engelsina Markizova sits on his lap and throws her arms around his neck. (The year after the photo was taken, Markizova later said, her actual father was disappeared one night; he was executed in 1938 as part of Stalin’s purge.) During Benito Mussolini’s 1925 “Battle for Grain” propaganda campaign to boost Italy’s wheat production, the leader himself went out, sickle in hand, to thresh, as cameras captured the image of a man vigorously pretending to provide for his family. And, of course, “father” is a title borne by generations of dictators, including Muammar Qaddafi, who often went by “Father of the Nation,” and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (who gave himself a surname meaning “father of the Turks”).

Joseph Stalin, in 1936, in a fatherly photo op with Engelsina Markizova, whose real father would be executed under his regime two years later.
(Russian State Film and Photo Archive / Alamy)

Trump might be too undisciplined (or unfamiliar with history) to follow this script exactly—though even some of his flights of fancy might be generously described as dad humor of a sort—but his projection of paternalism does fit a recognizable mold. In the 1960s, the clinical psychologist Diana Baumrind identified three distinct parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. A good example of the “permissive” dad might be Tim Walz, a hugger and an emoter who is always up for a chat. As for Trump, all you needed to do was spend a few minutes at one of his rallies to see that he comes off as a classic “authoritarian” father: withholding, demanding, not open to negotiation over, say, curfew time.

[Adam Serwer: There is no constitutional mandate for fascism.]

The upside of the authoritarian style of parenting, according to Baumrind, is that it results in well-behaved, orderly children, and this is the society that Trump is promising: one without the flung diapers and slammed doors. But there is a clear downside to having a father like this.

According to the National Institutes of Health, children of authoritarian parents can have “higher levels of aggression” and exhibit “shyness, social ineptitude, and difficulty making their own decisions.” They may have low self-esteem and difficulty controlling their anger. I’m not seeing a recipe here for good citizens—just loyal subjects.  

Is this who we might become? Trump’s paternalism, his projection of power and control, may have held appeal for his voters. It allowed them to project onto him all the things people project onto dads: that they are brave and indestructible and always there to kill an insect for us. Trump might have won his supporters’ love by fashioning himself as America’s father. But a democracy doesn’t need scared and obedient children. It needs grown-ups—vigilant, conscientious ones. And the president exists to serve them, not the other way around.

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Democrats and liberal pundits are already trying to figure out how the Trump campaign not only bested Kamala Harris in the “Blue Wall” states of the Midwest and the Rust Belt, but gained on her even in areas that should have been safe for a Democrat. Almost everywhere, Donald Trump expanded his coalition, and this time, unlike in 2016, he didn’t have to thread the needle of the Electoral College to win: He can claim the legitimacy of winning the popular vote.

Trump’s opponents are now muttering about the choice of Tim Walz, the influence of the Russians, the role of the right-wing media, and whether President Joe Biden should not have stepped aside in favor of Harris. Even the old saw about “economic anxiety” is making a comeback.

These explanations all have some merit, but mostly, they miss the point. Yes, some voters still stubbornly believe that presidents magically control the price of basic goods. Others have genuine concerns about immigration and gave in to Trump’s booming call of fascism and nativism. And some of them were just never going to vote for a woman, much less a Black woman.

But in the end, a majority of American voters chose Trump because they wanted what he was selling: a nonstop reality show of rage and resentment. Some Democrats, still gripped by the lure of wonkery, continue to scratch their heads over which policy proposals might have unlocked more votes, but that was always a mug’s game. Trump voters never cared about policies, and he rarely gave them any. (Choosing to be eaten by a shark rather than electrocuted might be a personal preference, but it’s not a policy.) His rallies involved long rants about the way he’s been treated, like a giant therapy session or a huge family gathering around a bellowing, impaired grandpa.

Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by promising to solve a litany of problems that always seem to involve money, immigrants, and minorities. The appeals from these charlatans resonate most not among the very poor, but among a bored, relatively well-off middle class, usually those who are deeply uncomfortable with racial and demographic changes in their own countries.

And so it came to pass: Last night, a gaggle of millionaires and billionaires grinned and applauded for Trump. They were part of an alliance with the very people another Trump term would hurt—the young, minorities, and working families among them.

Trump, as he has shown repeatedly over the years, couldn’t care less about any of these groups. He ran for office to seize control of the apparatus of government and to evade judicial accountability for his previous actions as president. Once he is safe, he will embark on the other project he seems to truly care about: the destruction of the rule of law and any other impediments to enlarging his power.

Americans who wish to stop Trump in this assault on the American constitutional order, then, should get it out of their heads that this election could have been won if only a better candidate had made a better pitch to a few thousand people in Pennsylvania. Biden, too old and tired to mount a proper campaign, likely would have lost worse than Harris; more to the point, there was nothing even a more invigorated Biden or a less, you know, female alternative could have offered. Racial grievances, dissatisfaction with life’s travails (including substance addiction and lack of education), and resentment toward the villainous elites in faraway cities cannot be placated by housing policy or interest-rate cuts.

No candidate can reason about facts and policies with voters who have no real interest in such things. They like the promises of social revenge that flow from Trump, the tough-guy rhetoric, the simplistic “I will fix it” solutions. And he’s interesting to them, because he supports and encourages their conspiracist beliefs. (I knew Harris was in trouble when I was in Pennsylvania last week for an event and a fairly well-off business owner, who was an ardent Trump supporter, told me that Michelle Obama had conspired with the Canadians to change the state’s vote tally in 2020. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the conversation.)

As Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, put it in a social-media post last night: The election went the way it did “because America wanted Trump. That’s it. People reaching to construct [policy] alibis for the public because they don’t want to grapple with this are whistling past the graveyard.” Last worries that we might now be in a transition to authoritarianism of the kind Russia went through in the 1990s, but I visited Russia often in those days, and much of the Russian democratic implosion was driven by genuinely brutal economic conditions and the rapid collapse of basic public services. Americans have done this to themselves during a time of peace, prosperity, and astonishingly high living standards. An affluent society that thinks it is living in a hellscape is ripe for gulling by dictators who are willing to play along with such delusions.

The bright spot in all this is that Trump and his coterie must now govern. The last time around, Trump was surrounded by a small group of moderately competent people, and these adults basically put baby bumpers and pool noodles on all the sharp edges of government. This time, Trump will rule with greater power but fewer excuses, and he—and his voters—will have to own the messes and outrages he is already planning to create.

Those voters expect that Trump will hurt others and not them. They will likely be unpleasantly surprised, much as they were in Trump’s first term. (He was, after all, voted out of office for a reason.) For the moment, some number of them have memory-holed that experience and are pretending that his vicious attacks on other Americans are just so much hot air.

Trump, unfortunately, means most of what he says. In this election, he has triggered the unfocused ire and unfounded grievances of millions of voters. Soon we will learn whether he can still trigger their decency—if there is any to be found.

Related:

What Trump understood, and Harris did not Democracy is not over.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

George T. Conway III: What we’re in for Voters wanted lower prices at any cost. Blame Biden, Tyler Austin Harper argues. Trump won. Now what?

Today’s News

The Republicans have won back control of the Senate. Votes are still being counted in multiple House races that could determine which party controls the House. Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a concession speech at Howard University, emphasizing that there will be a peaceful transfer of power. In an interview on Fox News, a Trump spokesperson said that Trump plans to launch “the largest mass-deportation operation of illegal immigrants” on his first day in office.

Dispatches

Work in Progress: “Trump’s victory is a reverberation of trends set in motion in 2020,” Derek Thompson writes. “In politics, as in nature, the largest tsunami generated by an earthquake is often not the first wave but the next one.”

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Evening Read

OK McCausland for The Atlantic

The Night They Hadn’t Prepared For

By Elaine Godfrey

The vibe shifted sometime around 10:30 p.m. Eastern.

For several hours beforehand, the scene at the Howard University Yard had been jubilant: all glitter and sequins and billowing American flags. The earrings were big, and the risers were full. Men in fraternity jackets and women in pink tweed suits grooved to a bass-forward playlist of hip-hop and classic rock. The Howard gospel choir, in brilliant-blue robes, performed a gorgeous rendition of “Oh Happy Day,” and people sang along in a way that made you feel as if the university’s alumna of the hour, Kamala Harris, had already won.

But Harris had not won—a fact that, by 10:30, had become very noticeable.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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