Donald Trump has long put on the aspirational persona of strongman and savior chosen by God, a charade not unlike those performed by many authoritarians and autocrats before him. And as has also been the case throughout history, gullible conservatives eat it up: His male fans are practically salivating over his masculine virility.
In the wake of his attempted assassination, this persona has taken on exaggerated form–and demands the help of the women around him. A strongman needs to display not just male strength, but divine consecration, as strong men must exist by the grace of God. A strongman also needs to exist for the protection of fragile women. Trump and the Trump women all know their roles in this performance.
Both Trump’s wife Melania and his daughter Ivanka have released statements thanking God and law enforcement for his survival. Melania’s well-meaning but somewhat bizarre two-page ode was full of flowery prose and attempts at loftiness that read less like the former first lady and more like an AI chatbot’s imitation. It’s easy to parse the statement’s odd language, and ungenerous to disparage the rare effort from the Trump team to appeal to decency, empathy and kindness. But more interesting is its overall aim: To attribute to Melania a soft voice that emphasizes Trump’s humanity—and does the feminized work of encouraging love, family, and reconciliation.
Ivanka, more of the quintessential successful daughter than the subservient wife, also leaned into gratitude, invoking her deceased mother and even suggesting Ivana Trump had some hand in protecting Trump.
This gentle path of thankfulness and reconciliation is not one the former president has taken himself, even while he encourages the country to “UNITE.” Trump’s post-shooting social media posts are far from his most vitriolic, perhaps because he rightly senses that this moment is one in which the wind is at his back.
Instead, he frames the attempted assassination as part of a greater and even Biblical war between good and evil, in which the blessed (and strong) will triumph. This is in line with his long-standing efforts to portray himself as a God-like figure, now welcoming campaign merch that shows him being sanctified by Jesus—or even a Messiah himself.
“Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” he wrote on his social media platform TruthSocial over the weekend. (The narcissistic subtext here, parroted by other leading Republicans and even some conservative religious leaders, is that God, in his infinite wisdom, apparently directed bullets away from Trump into several innocent rally-goers, killing one of them and seriously wounding others.) “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”
Elon Musk and other tech bros are championing Trump as a “hero.” Hedge fund provocateur Bill Ackman threw his support behind him. Former presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy wrote that the assassination attempt showed Americans “our next President’s true character, unvarnished. He took the fire, he took the hit, he felt the blood, and then he stood right back up for the people he was put here to lead.”
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah sent out a string of tweets extolling Trump as a “dynamo,” both with “cat-like reflexes” and “like a duck in the rain”—and, he wrote, “sometimes we really need a man like that.” (In case that wasn’t clear enough, he appended one more: “Pretty sure this is one of those times.”) At Evangelical churches across the country, Sunday services portrayed Trump not just as lucky, but as chosen for greatness and uniquely protected by God’s hand.
Uniquely blessed, uniquely strong: This is Trump’s message in the shooting’s aftermath. It’s also hard to argue that Trump’s behavior in its immediate aftermath wasn’t a moment of unmatched political brilliance either, as Ramaswamy and other fanboys also gushed: Standing up, his face streaked with blood, to raise a fist and yell “fight!”—no campaign ad could be as effective. The images of him standing strong in this moment are indelible, and show a formidable man unbowed, even, by bullets. It’s a picture not just of resilience, but of unbridled machoism.
In a race where vigor and vitality are at the core, this is a nightmare for President Joe Biden. For Trump’s base, though, it’s a fantasy come to fruition. For years, political observers have puzzled over the white Evangelical fealty to Trump, wondering how self-styled “values voters” could embrace a man with, well, so few morals. But experts have argued that the Evangelical worldview is premised on the idea that the fallen world is a dangerous, evil, scary place; sometimes, you need a strong protector, even if he’s a sinner and a bad guy. Sometimes, God will work through a fallen man to defend the flock.
And in the world of MAGA and white Evangelicals, that strong leader can only be a man. Men, this religious worldview teaches, are meant to lead, while women are gentler and naturally maternal. They must be led (by force if necessary).
Gender traditionalism, and the patriarchal dominance that defines it, is a cornerstone of right-wing authoritarianism on both the macro and micro levels: In government, in law, and in the home. Trump, who like too many men prizes traditional compliant femininity in his wife while wanting ambition, strength, and success for his daughter (technically he has two, but poor Tiffany seems to be a pervasive afterthought). That successful daughter is granted much more leeway than the obedient wife, but still complies with hyperfeminine norms: Dresses and skirts, long hair, always perfectly appointed in public.
That Ivanka is poised and beautiful is, of course, not a bad thing. But that her appearance is protective against accusations she’s a too-ambitious ball-buster and that she knows how to leverage feminine mannerisms to get her way tells us quite a bit, though, about the people around her and what they demand.
Melania, too, uses her clothing and appearance to speak even while she stays quiet. She has donned military-style outfits in moments when her husband has been at his most hard-charging, but generally favors modest feminine dresses.
The clothing signals exactly what Trump intends: He is married to a woman who has flat-out said that when it comes to their relationship, “we know our roles.” As one old friend of Melania’s put it to journalist Julia Ioffe for GQ, “It’s about all that power and protection.” Apparently Melania, like so many of Trump’s fans, “needed a strong man, a father figure.”
The men who seem to be practically crushing on Trump in the wake of the shooting also seem to crave a strongman father figure. They are enthralled not just by Trump’s policies, but with the whole divine and invincible protector package—and therein the implication that if they show sufficient devotion then they, too, will be kept safe, and may even be granted some respect and admiration in their own lives.
Donald and Melania Trump may not be the most devout couple to ever ascend to the White House. But they know better than any First Family in recent history how to appeal to those who live at the intersection of belief, fear, and desire for control. And when disaster struck, both knew exactly which parts to play.
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