Since Donald Trump won the White House, there have been subtle and overt changes in mass culture — particularly in its approach to Donald Trump and the culture wars.
Disney recently pulled a transgender storyline from a new animated series. Professional football and soccer players started mimicking Trump’s “dance” to much fanfare, and the NFL has no issue with it and hasn’t been mired in controversy. It’s even pervaded the clothes we wear — and not just red MAGA hats.
We pulled together four POLITICO reporters and writers to weigh in on broader changes in mass culture, and what it says about America’s acceptance of Trump and its turning away from “woke” culture.
David Kihara: What changes in culture have you seen since Trump won the November election?
Jessica Piper: I think the trend actually started before Trump’s win, although Trump himself has certainly had an impact. But I’m thinking, for example, about Target scaling back its LGBTQ merchandise ahead of Pride Month earlier this year, after conservative backlash the year prior. Companies seem to be more concerned about conservative backlash than they were a few years ago.
Shia Kapos: Yes, and now companies are scaling back on their DEI programming, too. I expect we’ll see more of that in the next four years.
Ian Ward: This may be colored by the fact of where I live (in New York City), but I’ve noticed a resurgence of preppy culture and fashion recently — expensive barn coats, those Ralph Lauren sweaters with American flags embroidered on the front. These are the clothes of America’s traditional elite, and I think that after the election, people are (somewhat paradoxically, given Trump’s populist rhetoric) less nervous about identifying themselves with that elite that they were before. There’s a sense that you don’t have to apologize for your privilege — and that it’s socially acceptable, or even fashionable, to embrace patriotic symbols. Thus the $400 American flag sweaters, I guess.
Brakkton Booker: It seems Democrats learned from their tough electoral losses by now shying away from casting Trump as a cartoonish villain or a conman or saying that he’s a billionaire that is out of touch. They’re now far more willing to say they’ve got to find ways to work with him — and leaning less into messages of being the party of the Trump resistance.
Shia Kapos: I’m seeing a version of that in Chicago, too. Here it is a hard-core Democratic town and now it’s not unusual to see a red “Make America Great Again” cap when you’re walking around the neighborhoods. Would have been unheard of four years ago.
Trump’s hold on culture which goes back decades to his cameos in movies and hip hop songs appears to be the nostalgia folks want to return to, not necessarily an era of electing a historic “first” — I’m even hearing Dems acknowledge they’ve overplayed their hand with leaning into identity politics.
Kihara: What do these changes say about how Americans’ views have evolved from the first Trump presidency?
Shia Kapos: Democrats have certainly had to rethink how they view voters who elected Trump. I don’t think they were doing that four years ago. This time, the Trump voter isn’t just a MAGA voter.
Jessica Piper: I think there’s two components: on the individual level, Trump isn’t as culturally toxic as he was the first time around. A common line in the first Trump presidency was that his supporters maybe didn’t like everything he tweeted, but he was good on the economy. But now I think we’re seeing at least a subset of culture that likes — maybe not literally Trump’s posts on Truth Social — but likes his persona, likes that he’s off color. And that’s more accepted.
I think the other part is that corporations and institutions are wary of potential consequences of a second Trump administration. So when you see companies scaling back DEI initiatives, for example, maybe that reflects a cultural shift, but it’s also about an incoming president who has suggested that DEI is illegal, and whether you want to be a company that’s crossing him.
Ian Ward: From my own conversations with conservatives, there’s a sense that we’ve gotten past the period of “peak woke” in American culture. There’s a pretty common refrain among the conservative chattering classes that “wokeness” took off in 2014, peaked in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter protests and is now retreating after Trump’s reelection. What that means in practice is that the average, non-ideological American — who was never really on board with progressive cultural politics to begin with — doesn’t feel the same social pressure to defer to the “woke” positions on every cultural issue. People feel empowered to take the counter-countercultural position in a way they didn’t during the first Trump term.
Brakkton Booker: The word I’m hearing repeatedly is “authentic” — it’s something both sides have attributed to Trump and Dems admit was a challenge for Harris. Despite how voters feel about him personally, voters on both sides acknowledge him being consistently who he’s always been was a driving force in his electoral victory.
His personal flaws, once viewed as a liability, became his strength.
Kihara: I was watching a rom-com a little while ago — “Anyone But You” — it was awful. But one thing I noticed was the cast was very diverse — filled with LGBTQ+ and minority characters. But they were all ridiculously wealthy. There was no economic diversity. Do you think this lack of economic representation has fueled some of the America First appeal? Or is it just part of the Hollywood dream machine?
Jessica Piper: Sydney Sweeney discourse, oh no. Rom-coms are maybe a different target audience, but obviously we have seen right-wing backlash to LGBTQ or even just female characters in video games and movies like Star Wars.
Shia Kapos: I think that plays out in lots of ways. Democrats have focused a lot of attention on debt relief for college graduates, but there is a whole world out there that didn’t do college.
Brakkton Booker: First of all, I applaud your transparency on being a rom-com watcher. But you hit on a point there, especially on the woke issue. What 2024 ended up showcasing was Dems could not shake the label of being the party of “cancel culture” and being too heavily influenced by Hollywood elites. (Recall George Clooney’s op-ed urging Biden to step aside).
Harris leaned on Megan Thee Stallion, Usher, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, all the while losing support of unions and working class voters.
Ian Ward: For the record, I thought that movie was delightful. But yes, I think Hollywood’s move to foreground racial diversity over any sort of class politics risks reenforcing the already existing impression among conservatives that identity politics — or what’s come to be known pejoratively as “DEI” — is a tool that elite wealthy liberals use to protect their class privilege and discipline members of the non-elite classes who don’t agree with them. That’s not to say that diversity in Hollywood is a bad thing, but I think it’s important to be clear-eyed about how it plays politically.
Kihara: We’ll discuss “Anyone But You” more extensively in our next roundtable. Do you think the Democrats brand has become, in a way, toxic?
Jessica Piper: One challenge I think is that Democrats often find themselves tied culturally to the pejorative DEI that conservatives love to hate. For instance, female characters being in “Star Wars” movies didn’t strictly have anything to do with Kamala Harris. But if being angry about diverse characters in movies or video games is a rallying or organizing cry for conservative-leaning young men, that’s a problem for Democrats politically.
Ian Ward: Without a doubt — and I think even Democratic insiders would admit it. Biden’s longtime digital director recently went on the record acknowledging that a bunch of popular sports media figures and podcasters had declined to host Harris on their shows because they were afraid of associating themselves with the Democratic brand. Compare that to 2020, when prominent athletes and sports figures were rushing to back Biden and oppose Trump. I think Democrats are going to have a very hard time finding a foothold in any culture or commercial arena (like professional sports) where it’s assumed that the audience or customer base skews even a little bit to the right.
Shia Kapos: Along those same lines, Ian, I wonder if we will see Hollywood pull back from political endorsements in the future.
Ian Ward: Agreed, Shia. We’re living in a moment of global rightward political retrenchment. I think it’s safe to assume that our cultural products will reflect that.
I would add that, fairly or not, Trump and MAGA have taken on a certain countercultural appeal — and that tends to jive with artistic subcultures that position themselves against the cultural mainstream. It’s not cool or subversive right now to be a Democratic partisan, who are seen as defenders of the status quo. There’s a certain subversiveness to being MAGA, and I think we’ll see that echo throughout the cultural sphere — though I’m not entirely sure what it will look like.
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