Caffeinated Politics

Why do a significant portion of divorced white males support Donald Trump? Could we flippantly ask how they ever got married? This week on Facebook, a male who graduated from Tri-County Schools in Plainfield, Wisconsin (as I did) blamed the woman who was murdered in Minneapolis. I was simply aghast.

I had known this person many years ago and never would have thought he would make such a moronic statement. This phenomenon of divorced males and their allegiance to Donald Trump, demonstrating it in the most vile and absurd ways, is one that I have paid some attention to since 2016, being the political nerd that I am. I know of another graduate, this one from my class, whose first wife left him within a short time after marriage, and he now espouses the most extreme views from Trump’s side of the divide.

The issue of divorce in our national politics has been around for a long time. Ask Nelson Rockefeller. Ronald Reagan. As divorced voters, however, the data is fascinating. Gallup polls show that the political divide between divorced men and women is larger today than it has been at any time over the last 20 years. In 2024, the majority, 54 per cent of divorced men, identify as Republican compared to 41 per cent of divorced women.

As I have followed this topic over the past decade, it strikes me that the very things these divorced men now seek from Trump are probably the same things their former wives sought from them. Trump has told those men he “hears them’ and then validates their fears, worries, or concerns. It is as if Trump has become the wife these divorced men wished they now had.

In our nation, we have a growing number of white males who support the very things most of us were taught to reject and stay away from when we were youngsters. The past few days of reading comments or posts from people concerning the murder by an ICE agent in Minneapolis have been, sadly, illuminating. Those things we were brought up to repudiate are openly and willfully embraced by people we thought we once knew, or once worked with, or once considered worthy of our respect.