Hot Chicks For Trump

If you watched coverage of the Republican National Convention, you may have caught a piece done by the BBC, in which a reporter asked Donald Trump supporter whether or not he would actually build a literal wall. While the interviews were fascinating, to some (myself included) the most memorable part of the piece was an the giant pin one of Trump's supporters was wearing.

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Specifically, this button

To a lot of people this button seems like the perfect summary of Trump's campaign, obnoxious, trashy, and inappropriate. While all that may be true, the Republican party wouldn't have been selling these buttons if they didn't promote their ideals. In fact, while it may not seem like it's making a point at all, this button speaks to two aspects of Trump's campaign that often go overlooked. 

For starters, the button is clearly trying to appeal to women. It doesn't make a substantive appeal by any means, but the hope is that women buy and wear these pins. Throughout the race, Trump and other republican candidates have struggled to win over female voters. Though this pin isn't trying to win people over, it does increase the visibility of Trump's women supporters. The women that sport these pins make a better case for Trump being a good candidate for women than he ever could. Trump is a pro life candidate that routinely trivializes women's issues and has called women "fat pigs" and "bimbos". He's never going to be able to take that back. He's never going to be able to appeal to women that care about issues like the pay gap, abortion, and the treatment of women in the military, but that's not the point, that's not who he's trying to appeal to. The point is that it's pink, it says something positive (albeit, trashy) about women, and it doesn't bring any of that nasty substantive stuff into the conversation. 

Then there's the issue of the button being crass. The tone used here is casual and frankly inappropriate for something tied to a presidential candidate. But this informal tone is prevalent in the majority of Trump’s speeches and there's a reason for that. It shows he’s not like highly educated, elitist, career politicians who can eloquently say nothing. He's like his supporters. He's going to "tell it like it is" and not mince his words. Whether or not he, a lifelong, privileged billionaire, has anything in common with the mechanic in Indiana who's voting for him because he's "relatable" is up for debate; but again that's not really the point. This is how Trump wins people over, he convinces them that he's different, he's one of the people and that's a good thing. Yes, he's rich, but he's also genuine. Genuinely terrible? Maybe, but you can't deny that he is unlike other politicians.