The young star witness in the Congressional January 6th Hearing, Cassidy Hutchinson, significantly impressed me. And that admiration continued as I saw her making rounds on television shows publicizing her recent book, Enough.
But my respect for her was substantially tempered when I learned that she had tried to follow Trump to Mar-a-Lago as he exited the White House in January of 2021.
Among a myriad of other issues, this man lacks the attention span needed for an average meeting, according to Hutchinson herself. How could she feel so loyal to him, knowing his limitations and after seeing all the coup activities led by Donald Trump up close? And she should have known that he is loyal to no one.
Whoopi Goldberg provided my answer on The View. Host Sonny Hostin was trying to get an explanation for Hutchinson’s report in her book recounting how she told her mother that she was hoping to move to Mar-a-Lago with Trump, even after the events of January 6.
Hostin asked, “What would make you still go to Mar-a-Lago?” Whoopi Goldberg answered by interjecting, “Did you not realize you were in a cult?” Yes, Trump’s Cult is extensive.
Trump’s “Art of the Steal,” as New York Attorney General Letitia James calls Trump’s business dealings, reminds me of how discussions of Trump kept appearing in my classes years ago.
For about 20 years, Donald Trump was a punchline in some of the undergraduate classes I taught. In teaching social class, I would introduce the classifications sociologist W. Lloyd Warner developed in the 1930s and 1940s–upper, middle, and lower classes, each divided into upper and lower. In distinguishing the upper-upper class from the lower-upper class, I would include such stereotypes as follows. The upper-upper class was “old money,” inherited wealth. These people do not work; their money works for them, and they live privately, usually out of the public spotlight.
On the other hand, the lower upper were the “new rich.” They worked; they did things to make their money, and they lived very much in the public spotlight. While we seldom see the houses of the old rich, the new rich build their homes so they can be seen. In other words, some of the new rich are ostentatious. They want everyone to know they are rich.
After laying out these social class stereotypes, I would ask the students who in America best personified the new rich. Without fail, from the mid-1980s to the 2000s, the overwhelming answer was almost always the same: “Donald Trump.” Please note that I never mentioned the name Donald Trump before the students mentioned him.
The Trump example enabled students to get into the preliminary class analysis. Students learned that typically, the upper-upper class does not socialize with the lower-upper class. In the 1980s, one student from Miami Beach mentioned that they had seen examples of that phenomenon as the old rich in that area tended not to associate with the new rich.
Although my students’ low regard for Trump was not based on any seriously problematic issues about him revealed over the past six years, they would not have regarded this stereotypical lower-upper class person as presidential timber. The students knew of Trump’s ostentatiousness and his poor business aptitude, as in the mid-1980s, when I started that exercise, he bought Eastern Airlines and ran it into bankruptcy. They may not have been surprised at some of Trump’s words and actions over the past six years, but they were probably astonished that he won the presidency.
And few, if any, of them would have followed Trump to Mar-a-Lago at the time.
