President Donald Trump has moved at lightning speed since being reelected to implement more than 200 executive orders, redefining U.S. policy on immigration, energy, race, education, crime, freedom of speech, and religion.
When it comes to the culture wars, say conservatives, Trump has not only regained ground but also opened new fronts, presenting issues such as the environment and immigration as matters of common sense values. Whether those gains will hold is an open question.
Trump has been adept at using online media to circumvent established newspapers and networks to control narratives on cultural issues, according to Jonathan Choe, an independent journalist and senior fellow with the Discovery Institute.
“Trump, at the end of the day, is a businessman and a showman,” Choe told The Epoch Times. “He understands media. He’s understood it for decades, and he knows how to quickly pivot to new media.
“The Trump White House, in my opinion, that entire media team, has done a spectacular job of understanding the shifts in culture, but also in the media,” he said.
That doesn’t necessarily translate to lasting gains.
Darryl Hart, a history professor at the conservative Hillsdale College, told the Epoch Times, “I don’t think he is changing many minds, certainly not on the other side.”
“The polarization is really strong,” he said.
This view is supported by recent polling data that suggests Americans remain sharply divided on cultural issues.
Regarding gender issues, a May survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that, while only 41 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s performance in general, 52 percent supported his policies on transgender issues, which include barring transgender-identifying boys from girls’ sports and private spaces. Responses were split according to party, with 90 percent of Republicans supporting Trump’s policies and 81 percent of Democrats opposing them.
This raises the issue of how enduring some of Trump’s policies might be if Democrats retake the White House at the end of his term. Election wins on Nov. 5 in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City, as well as a popular vote in California to redistrict the state’s electoral map, show that the opposing side remains a powerful force in America.
Opening New Fronts
All the same, conservative analysts say some of Trump’s cultural agenda will likely endure. Trump has opened up new fronts on the culture wars, they say, on topics such as Antifa, climate change, and immigration.
“President Trump has taken something that the majority of Americans did not even realize was an issue, and now today the majority of Americans think we should deport people who have entered the country illegally,” Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, which advocates for civil liberties and smaller government, told The Epoch Times.
Still, a June survey of 5,044 U.S. adults by Pew Research Center found that the public is split over this issue, with 50 percent approving the use of state and local law enforcement in deportation efforts, while 49 percent disapprove.
On climate change, Trump has tried to move the country away from the narrative of existential crisis and pending global catastrophe to one of Americans having affordable and abundant energy.
Prominent figures like Bill Gates and Ted Nordhaus have softened their more alarmist stances, seemingly coming around to Trump’s point of view. Gates stated that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” and Nordhaus wrote that he “no longer believe[s] this hyperbole.”
Trump has also shone a spotlight on political violence from hardcore leftist groups like Antifa, which he designated as a domestic terrorist organization in an executive order.
“Because Trump put that label on Antifa, it’s now part of the national conversation,” Choe, who is based in Seattle, told The Epoch Times. “Before, when I was covering Antifa during the early days of the [Black Lives Matter] riots in 2020, when they were going around trashing Seattle in ninja outfits, local media wouldn’t even use the word, ‘Antifa.’”
“What the Trump White House has done from a messaging standpoint—waging an information war on the left-wing corporate media—they’ve done so brilliantly, in my opinion,” he said.
