About a month after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, a video went viral featuring a supercut of the new president saying the word “China” over and over again, with his characteristic suite of intonations. A bassist, deadpanning and visible on the right half of the screen, overdubbed himself playing the exact notes of Trump’s vocalizations. The implicit message was clear to liberal viewers: there was something ridiculous about Trump in general and something garish about his “Sinophobia” in particular.
Distasteful as it may have been to genteel multiculturalists, Trump’s early insistence on bringing up China played a key role in winning over blue-collar defectors from the Democratic base. First their party had spurned them culturally, neglecting bread-and-butter issues in favor of esoteric gender politics and race-mongering. Then the Democrats took to outright antagonizing the working class by celebrating deindustrialization. Out of work in coal country? Learn to code! Trump, meanwhile, possessed the instincts and the guts to say what was previously unsayable (by both parties): we’d cut a bad deal with China and made the working class foot the bill.
