There is one thing that Trump generally doesn’t lie about: his emotions – namely the ones happening in the immediate moment. I think that’s why people think he “tells it like it is” and “isn’t PC.” Politicians, whether they’re honest about what they’re doing or not, pretty much across the board lie about how they’re feeling, or at least put on an act. Trump doesn’t.
In politics, there is a proper way to show emotions – we never see Obama get angry, and Hillary Clinton is always smiling, frowning, and laughing at the right moments to the appropriate things. We know she’d probably like to write an angry 3 am tweetstorm at Comey and Weiner but she reels that instinct in. In public, she is appropriately disappointed at the outcome of the election.
When a politician’s veneer cracks and real emotions seep into the constructed ones, the result is a kind of hybrid emotion that people can’t read, which makes us uncomfortable. Think of that moment when Clinton noticed the balloons drop.
Trump doesn’t really have a veneer, because he doesn’t seem to think that certain emotions are indecorous. I think it makes people simultaneously trust him more and feel validated about some of their own baser instincts. He makes it seem like it’s ok to feel vindictive if you appear to be losing, it’s ok to be happy when you get a compliment (even if it’s from a racist asshat), it’s ok to brag about your wealth. It’s ok be violently angry, even if it’s misdirected at innocent people.
Our current culture doesn’t really trust people who seem to be feeling exactly as they’re supposed to be all the time. There’s a reason that Jennifer Lawrence is America’s Sweetheart right now and perfect Anne Hathaway isn’t – we don’t have patience for filters, and in some ways have forgotten that sometimes they exist for a good reason.
To be clear, I admire and understand Clinton’s emotional restraint, and I think Trump DOES have a filter, but it’s the same kind that Kim Kardashian has – a filter that makes literally everything look unplanned and emotionally authentic, à la reality TV. It turned out to be an effective way to keep people watching and make them feel like he was a personal friend.
I think what people will start to realize, and what we can start to point out, is that while Trump tells it like it is with regards to current emotional state, he doesn’t tell it like it is with regards to what he’s doing (or even what he did in the past). We can acknowledge that knowing how a politician is feeling most of the time is very, very refreshing, but must also contend with the fact that not knowing what a politician is doing and how they will act is very, very dangerous.
Trump has no history in public office that we can extrapolate from, he won’t release his tax returns, and we don’t really know where and how he does his business. He’s never outlined a concrete plan for the actual execution of what he proposes, and he doesn’t like the press bringing it up. We know he genuinely likes Putin as a person, but what we don’t know is what they actually talk about together. Did they conspire to win the American Election? Is Trump in a position to make a lot of money if we start funding Russia’s wars? Is it just a bizarre bromance? We won’t know until Trump does something. And by then we could be in a situation that endangers American and global citizens alike.