David Brown
Appearances
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
I think that Jackson, if he were around, he would recognize in some of Trump's rhetoric a kind of a class consciousness that spoke to him.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
Of course, this is ironic because Jackson was a frontier aristocrat and Donald Trump is a billionaire. I think that where Jackson would really differ from Trump is, you know, we think of the bank war. Jackson did not believe that money made the man. Jackson thought that leadership, a character, made the man.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
So when Donald Trump said, I think it was in 2015, 2016, when he was asked, you know, why run for the presidency? What equips you? And he said, well, you know, I've got a lot of money. I'm a billionaire. I'm really good with numbers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the kind of economic self-interest or privilege that Jackson was very much against.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
And when Jackson runs for the presidency, Easterners say that this is sort of beyond the pale.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
It did not cost him votes, though, in the West, probably parts of the East as well, like much of upstate New York or Pennsylvania. I think that these communities, they recognize that in the West... customs were different, that amenities were different, and Jackson and Rachel, they did what they did because that's how people in the West lived, which is not knowingly and ambiguously.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
So you can look at this in a number of different ways. This is just a relationship, a marriage, but this is also a kind of an East versus West tension.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
Jackson believed that he was really being called out, that Dickinson had made comments about Jackson's marriage. And Jackson, I think, also had the feeling that Dickinson was trying to make or extend his own reputation at Jackson's expense.