After Trump’s father Fred died in 1999, he delivered a striking eulogy at a church in Manhattan. He told the crowd about the moment he’d learned of his father’s death at breakfast — just after reading a front-page New York Times story that profiled the success of his biggest development at the time, Trump Place, a group of luxury condos on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He went on to talk about other accomplishments his dad had approved of. “The funeral of Fred Trump wasn’t about Fred Trump; it was an opportunity to do some brand burnishing by Donald, for Donald,” wrote Gwenda Blair, the biographer of the Trump family, in an article about the president’s awkwardness at funerals. People who know the family say there’s a reason Trump almost never displays empathy in public: His father passed on a “tough-guy” mentality and taught him that showing sadness was a sign of weakness. Life was simply a series of skirmishes to be won. The president often describes himself as a solitary person standing against the masses: one man against a flood of Mexican immigrants, against elites, against foreign countries like China, against the “swamp” of bureaucrats in Washington, and against the “alarmist” scientists. It’s easier to identify with a single person than an amorphous mass of people. And many people back Trump because they also feel victimized by the forces he rails against, like immigration or unfair depictions in the media. As Trump started rising in the polls during the 2016 Republican primary, Breithaupt was watching him carefully. “He was so much better at this game of side-taking and polarizing than I had seen before,” he said. When Texas Senator Ted Cruz, another candidate, tried to play Trump’s game, insinuating that Trump had socially liberal “New York values” and wasn’t a true conservative, Trump was quick to turn around the attack and claim time for himself. He recalled the moment he witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, recasting “New York values” to refer to the resilience of the city — and how he helped rebuild Manhattan after the attacks. “From that moment on, I could run this ‘inner Trump’ voice like a little bad demon inside of myself,” Breithaupt said. For example, when the New York Times recently reported revelations about how Trump avoided federal income taxes, Breithaupt found himself slipping into the president’s shoes. Trump’s supporters are impressed when he rebuffs accusations that seem impossible to spin in his favor, Breithaupt said: This makes Trump come across as strong, and he “can even gain from this situation.” Trump always has a comeback, whether facing accusations of sexual assault, obstruction of justice, or denying the science around climate change. But one thing that he hasn’t figured out how to frame to his advantage is the pandemic, Breithaupt said. “He never got a handle on the corona situation,” he said. “Suddenly it looked like, now he’s slipping … we need real leadership here, we don’t need a media show in this case.” But that focus could change following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the sudden vacancy on the Supreme Court. The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett has already turned into another partisan fight.
In the first presidential debate, Trump was basically doing “damage control,” Breithaupt said. Between the news about Trump’s tax avoidance and the country’s COVID-19 death toll passing 200,000, the president found himself in a tough spot. The interruptions and brawling — all the clamor — shifted the focus. “The topics that could have hurt Trump, like his taxes, were drowned along the way,” Breithaupt said. In future debates, Breithaupt expects that Trump might bring up an issue like immigration (before the 2016 election, he talked about “Mexican rapists” and called immigrants “animals”), and use illustrative examples to stand for the whole. Trump often points to the story of “Beautiful Kate” Steinle, a woman who was killed by a stray bullet from an undocumented immigrant, to rally the empathy of his base. Biden, on the other hand, uses empathy in a more typical fashion, but one that’s still unusual for a presidential candidate — more like something you’d see from a local politician. While former President Obama would tell personal stories to make rhetorical arguments, Breithaupt said, Biden talks about his personal experience in a way that doesn’t necessarily have a right answer, but is intended to be emotionally moving, especially when he speaks about his son, Beau Biden, who died from cancer in 2015. “I know how it feels to lose someone you love,” Biden said during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. “I know that deep black hole that opens up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.” “He’s not righteous about it,” Breithaupt said. “He’s just exhibiting human emotions. In that sense, I do think he is a new kind of ‘empathy candidate’ that hasn’t made it to a presidential candidate level in American history.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s secret debate weapon: Empathy on Sep 30, 2020.