Politics: Trying to Understand Trump

I've been trying to get my head around the Trump phenomena and I found listening to these two podcasts to be helpful.

Robert Costa (currently a reporter at the Washington Post) was one of the first reporters to start covering Trump and recognized he was a serious candidate during a little covered Trump visit to Iowa very early in the campaign process in 2013. In this interview, Costa shared many anecdotes that illustrates the traits of Trump that voters were drawn to. Costa has a plaque at his office that says, "Assume Nothing" that allowed him to observe and report on Trump without dismissing him like many other typical political reporters.



After seeing this episode, I looked for more episodes in the "Uncommon Knowledge" series and found this item about J.D. Vance and his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." Vance grew up in the "rustbelt" where some of the "rural white working class" live and that Trump often talked about and championed. I had heard Vance in a shorter interview on NPR in 2016 and he commented he understood Trump's appeal to "his people" but he himself was not a Trump supporter.

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