Is Trump Especially Divisive?

It depends on what you mean. Certainly, he trolls a lot of people on the left, and he certainly triggers an abnormally large number of liberals who find his style of politics grossly offensive. 

But if you listen to what he says carefully, in almost every case of Trump’s “divisive” and trolling statements about his domestic political adversaries, he is punching at people with cultural or political clout, not average Democrats. He makes fun of prominent celebrities, politicians, and media figures, but to the best of my recollection, he does not target the average member of the Democratic Party. 

All of American history started 5 minutes ago, folks. https://t.co/ohBEp9z0c7 pic.twitter.com/e1fVCgYM6N

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) May 27, 2025

Perhaps that is why Trump has been building a coalition that includes a large number of former Democrats who now feel homeless in their former party. 

Flashback to 2016:

“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”

— Hillary Clinton https://t.co/68xoUY0FY5 pic.twitter.com/fU4rWgfe0D

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) October 30, 2024

Conversely, the attacks on Trump have not only been directed at him personally, but rather at his entire coalition. Trump supporters–indeed, almost every Republican, has been called “deplorable,” “garbage,” “bitter clingers,” Nazis, fascists, racist, sexist, and alphabetphobic. 

🚨 TREASON! 🚨
Joe Biden, the incumbent but disputed President of the United States, just called Trump supporters garbage.

This includes former dems who switched over after having enough of Biden’s regime.

Berating your own citizens is not a good look for you or Kamala. 😬 pic.twitter.com/IUF8KxLuZF

— Marauder Magazine (@MarauderMag) October 30, 2024

Biden’s “garbage” comment is the “basket of deplorables” moment of this election. Either he was trying to actively undermine Kamala as revenge, or he just proved why he’s unfit to be President – which, incredibly, he still is. pic.twitter.com/i76pumyWeV

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 30, 2024

There is a massive difference between singling out individuals or small groups of people and slandering everybody in an entire political party or race. The Democratic elite have spent years attacking white males, males in general, Christians, and just about every group they consider “privileged.”

That is not divisive?

🚨NEW: Hillary Clinton appears to have learned nothing from her 2016 “basket of deplorables” remark — she just smeared nearly *all* Republican women as “HANDMAIDEN[S] TO THE PATRIARCHY”🚨@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/9rrFjDdO12

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) May 18, 2025

The funny thing is, I believe that a vast number of people who think Trump is especially divisive simultaneously believe that none of these statements by these Democrats are divisive because they believe them to be true, or that they are expressed in private among fellow travelers so often that they literally don’t expect that anybody could disagree with them. 

Sometimes I feel, when I am watching or listening to a conversation among people who live in a liberal bubble, that they have no idea how distorted and, yes, hateful their characterization of others really can be. It is the same phenomenon as racists in the 1950s dropping the “N” word casually in conversations among themselves. 

They almost don’t hear it. It conveys a contempt that is so ingrained that they don’t even notice it. 

We are bitter clingers, deplorable, enemies of democracy…. but Trump is divisive? Trump’s big sin with the powers-that-be is that he is in public what the rest of them are in private. But he’s no different, he’s just honest about it.

— Brittany (@bccover) May 27, 2025

I’m not blind to the fact that this is a universal problem, but I do think there is a difference both quantitatively and qualitatively between Democrats and Republicans here. I don’t say this because Democrats are inherently less decent–I really do know that there are plenty of decent Democrats who genuinely want what is good for the world by their lights. 

But it is easier for Democrats to slip into this mindset for a couple of reasons: in general, their ideology is more moralistic and less practical, meaning that they attribute opposition to any policy as a rejection of an objective good for selfish reasons; and liberals are much more likely to live in liberal bubbles because they can. The entire cultural elite is on their side, as is academia, the media, and almost every member of their class. 

A conservative has a much harder time trying to escape liberals than the opposite, and chances are good that conservatives deal with authority figures who are liberal, since they are overrepresented in education, management, HR departments, etc. Most conservatives have learned, at least, to tone down their contempt for liberals unless they work in an environment that tolerates it, which is rare. 

No doubt, liberals find Trump offensive and divisive, and he often enough pokes them to get a reaction. But most of those pokes are to get the liberal elite to blurt out things that drive ordinary people away from the left, such as getting them to voice that they think we are garbage, deplorable, bitter, clinging racists. 

That divides people, I’m sure. But the solution is simple: quit insulting your fellow citizens.