Ivanka Represents the Heart & Soul of this Administration
Fredericks on CNN/HLN: “Ivanka Trump represents the heart and soul of this Administration…”
Never Trumpers are the New Whigs
Fredericks on CNN with Carol Costello: Never Trumpers are the New Whigs
Zero Tolerance at the Border is a Deterrent
Fredericks on CNN: “Zero Tolerance at the Border is a Deterrent”
John Fredericks Slays Sec. of State Over “Moron” Comments
John Fredericks says, “Get the hell out, and don’t let the door hit you in the keister!”
Donald Trump and the Long Tradition of American Populism
Updated | Most political observers readily agree that the soaring Donald Trump crusade has tapped into a restive populist mood but hardly anyone knows what populism is, or why on earth a megalomaniacal billionaire has emerged as its latest standard-bearer.
The Beltway definition of populism is disdainful. When it’s affixed to unexpected movements like the Trump insurgency, it seems to mean little more than a prolonged public tantrum. Looking back at recent pundit-diagnosed outbreaks of the populist bacillus, one sees it dubiously attached to causes as different as the drawling “Two Americas” stump speeches of John Edwards, and the America First culture-war candidacies of Pat Buchanan. Going further back, historians and pundits have spied populism everywhere from the racist shade of George Wallace and other stiff-necked Southern segregationists, to the red-baiting career of Joseph McCarthy, to the redistributionist reign of Huey Long in New Deal Louisiana. Still further back, populism has been detected in such 19th-century figures as its great Gilded Age avatar William Jennings Bryan and Andrew Jackson.
It’s tempting to dismiss populism as an epithet deployed by the power elite—a label that members of our political class slap on something popular that they also deem threatening. But there’s more to it than that. The populist movement of the late 19th century, for instance, was grounded in economic grievances, with leaders like Bryan seeking to unite the nation’s producing classes—farmers, small-town businessmen and urban workers—who thought they could overthrow the industrial age’s regime of market cartels, debt peonage and degraded wage labor.
But populism, during the farmers’ revolt of the 1890s, was also a cultural insurgency—a kind of self-administered political wake for the beleaguered middle American Protestant soul, newly adrift in an urbanized, capitalist nation of immigrant laborers and international bankers, and yearning for the folk egalitarianism of an idealized Jeffersonian republic. This is how populism has come to double as a synonym for modern cultural conservatism. Historian Richard Hofstadter famously branded the Gilded Age agrarian uprising as a precursor to McCarthyism: an outpouring of economic resentments that gave aggrieved farmers license to scapegoat any and all available elites—Jewish bankers, British titans of industry, American robber barons—for their declining cultural influence.
Trump is an unlikely populist because he subscribes to so few positions associated with the cultural side of conservative populist revolt. Before his plunge into the 2016 race, he hadn’t taken a hard-line stance against gay marriage and reproductive rights; and as a twice-divorced, one-time Manhattan playboy, he’s anything but a poster boy for family values. While all the Republican candidates denounce Obamacare, including Trump, and all have their own market-based alternatives to the Affordable Care Act, Trump is the most liberal sounding. On the pundit altar of Morning Joe he praised single-payer Canada as a system that works but said America needs a private health insurance. “You can’t have a guy that has no money, that’s sick, and he can’t go see a doctor, he can’t go see a hospital,” Trump recently told conservative radio talk show host John Fredericks. Trump added that even if his position costs him support in the GOP primaries, “you have to take care of poor people.”
And yet GOP primary voters have flocked to the early Trump boom. A recent CNN poll indicates that 53 percent of GOP voters feel their views aren’t represented well in Washington—virtually double the 27 percent of Democrats agreeing with that idea. (Never mind that the federal government that so rankles Republican voters is now overrun with Republican leaders—populists often lay into their ideology with the greatest enthusiasm.) Among those saying they want Trump to continue his primary run, CNN also found, are “those seen as the core of the GOP primary electorate: 58 percent of white evangelicals, 58 percent of conservatives and 57 percent of Tea Party supporters.”
Read the full report here.
The John Fredericks Show is Common Sense for the Commonwealth. It is the only morning political news-talk show focused on local issues that impact the daily lives of Virginia residents. The John Fredericks Show broadcasts live weekdays from 6-10am on WHKT AM 1650 – Hampton Roads, WNTW AM 820 – Richmond – Central Virginia
and WBZS 102.5 FM – Roanoke and the New River Valley
Donald Trump: ‘I’m Actually a Conservative with a Heart’
Businessman Donald Trump on Thursday said the country has to provide health care
for the poor and that he’s “actually a conservative with a heart” who can work out deals with hospitals to make it happen.
“I want people taken care of in the country, okay? You can call it anything you want, but I want — including people that don’t have anything,” Mr. Trump said on “The John Fredericks Show.” about “We gotta do that.”
Mr. Fredericks, a Virginia-based radio host who has predicted that Mr. Trump will win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, had asked Mr. Trump how to reconcile his statements critical of President Obama’s health care law with past statements in which Mr. Trump was warm to the notion of universal health care coverage.
“You know, I’m a very conservative guy … number one, the people that can do it, we’re going to get them plans that are so good and we’re going to break the borders, we’re going to go [to] the private plans,” Mr. Trump said. “A lot of people had plans they loved before Obamacare came along. You probably did. I have friends that had really good plans — now they have horrible plans and they’re paying five times more for [them].
“We’re going to get great plans, we’re not going to have huge costs — the biggest thing the government has to do is make sure these companies are very, very solvent, you know, that they’re very strong,” he continued. “Because what you don’t want is having a company collapse, right? So that’s the only function of the government.
“Then on top of that, the people that can’t afford to do that, we have to help them out at the lower level, we have to help them out,” he said. “And I would make deals with hospitals and I’d make deals with people where they can get them care, John. I mean, you can’t have a guy that has no money that’s sick and he can’t go see a doctor, he can’t go see a hospital. I just don’t think [you] can have that, ‘cause I’m actually a conservative with a heart. And if I lose votes for that, I don’t really care.
“Because you have to take care of poor people — I mean, think of yourself: you’re really sick and you’re not allowed to see a doctor. I mean, it’s almost like, sort of … being in hell,” Mr. Trump said. “So we have to take care of people that are poor. We have to do it. And we can make a plan, we can work a deal — I can work a deal with hospitals that’ll be great for everybody and they’ll be able to go there.
“You’re not going to want to do that — it won’t be pretty, it won’t be as nice as the other — but at least they’re being taken care of,” he said. “And under Obamacare, they’re actually not being taken care of very well, either. But Obamacare is a disaster; it’s going to cost a fortune and it really kicks in in ‘16 and it has to be repealed and replaced and we can do a great job with that, I have no doubt — I’m very expert on that stuff.
“You know, I have thousands of people working for me and I have great plans and … they got lucky but I have good people so I guess I got lucky, too,” he said.
Mr. Fredericks said he’s “the only media person this side of the Milky Way” that’s predicting Mr. Trump, who has surged to first in a poll released this week on the 2016 GOP field, will ultimately win the nomination.
Mr. Trump said “you may be right” and that he will work hard to make him right.
“I’m always right,” Mr. Fredericks said.
“You are always right — have a good time John, thank you very much,” Mr. Trump said.
The John Fredericks Show is Common Sense for the Commonwealth. It is the only morning political news-talk show focused on local issues that impact the daily lives of Virginia residents. The John Fredericks Show broadcasts live weekdays from 6-10am on WHKT AM 1650 – Hampton Roads, WNTW AM 820 – Richmond – Central Virginia
and WBZS 102.5 FM – Roanoke and the New River Valley
Trump on HRVA Radio: I Can Work a Deal
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, the real estate and pop culture mogul who appears to be the front runner in an early GOP race, did John Fredericks’ radio show this morning.
Trump dropped both compliment and invective, the first for Fredericks, the latter for the Obama administration, the media, the Mexican and Chinese governments, Macy’s and Macy’s CEO, whom he called a gutless coward for recently dropping Trump’s clothing line.
Trump also referred to his opponents in this presidential race as “all these other clowns.”
“He’s going to be the nominee,” Fredericks said in introducing Trump. “I am never wrong.”
Fredericks then read a promo recommending “investment grade diamonds” and brought on Trump, who lauded the self proclaimed “Commander of Common Sense” as “a man of great brain power and a lot of common sense.”
Trump’s pitch can be summarized thusly: If I was president, I’d bring my amazing deal-making abilities to bear, solving roughly all problems and rebuilding the American Dream, which is currently dead.
Some outtakes:
On the Obama administration’s handling of the Iran nuclear deal: “Are we dealing with 3rd grade people here? … A classic incompetence. … We have people who did not read The Art of the Deal.”
How he would have handled Iran: “I would have sanctioned them up the wazoo. … I’d rather not go in militarily.”
How long these negotiations should have taken, following a doubling or tripling of sanctions, and a satisfied demand for American prisoner releases: “About a day.”
On the media: “Much of it is very dishonest.”
On negotiating with other countries: “I beat the Chinese (in business deals). … You mention my name to them, they go hide under a table. … All these other clowns … Bush can’t make deals with China.”
On his previous support for universal health care: “I want people taken care of … including people who don’t have anything. … I’m actually a conservative with a heart.”
How he’d accomplish that: “I can work a deal with hospitals.”
The roughly 20 minute interview wrapped with Trump telling Fredericks he’s going to work hard to win the nomination and prove him right.
“I am always right,” Fredericks replied.
Read the Daily Press article here.
The John Fredericks Show is Common Sense for the Commonwealth. It is the only morning political news-talk show focused on local issues that impact the daily lives of Virginia residents. The John Fredericks Show broadcasts live weekdays from 6-10am on WHKT AM 1650 – Hampton Roads, WNTW AM 820 – Richmond – Central Virginia
and WBZS 102.5 FM – Roanoke and the New River Valley