What is driving Americans to vote for Donald Trump? A resentment and jealousy of the elite, says former Today anchor Katie Couric.
Couric made the curious comments during an interview with Bill Maher in which they discussed the mounting polarization in politics and culture in the United States.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Andrew Klavan, host of The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan Show, to discuss the aloofness of Couric’s commentary and why it is indicative of a larger shift in the media.
Couric’s Controversy
Couric was a guest on Sunday’s episode of Maher’s Club Random podcast when she raised the notion that Trump supporters are essentially driven by jealousy and bitterness over the wealth gap in America.
COURIC: I feel like… the socioeconomic disparities are a lot and class resentment is a lot and anti-intellectualism and elitism is what is driving many of these anti-establishment [voters] — which are Trump voters. So, I think that is a huge problem that we have to address.
I mean, globalization and the transition from an industrial to a technological society — I don’t know if you’ve ever been jealous of what someone else has or resentful — it is such a corroding and bitter, almost bile feeling.
For his part, Maher noted that Trump voters have complaints about very real issues like the border, radical gender ideology, and more. “What they see on the other side, to them, is even more dangerous,” he responded. “Because it’s closer to home: ‘My kid is coming home from school and he thinks he’s a racist? He’s five, what have you been telling him? My son thinks maybe he’s not a boy.’”
He also criticized the media for not trying to better understand where MAGA supporters are coming from. “Those kind of things are what they say, ‘That’s why I’m voting for Trump. We don’t like him but he’s all that stands between us and madness,’” he added. “That’s their view, and I would like that view presented [by the media].”
‘They Don’t Get It’
Couric’s commentary is, in Megyn’s view, akin to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment in the lead up to the 2016 election. “I mean, talk about not getting it, not even close to getting it,” she said.
Even so, she believes that kind of thinking is nothing out of the ordinary for those in Couric’s position. “When they hear the concerns expressed by the right half of the country about the policies that have gotten us here, the culture wars that have completely changed children’s existence, their safety, and so on, they respond with just… dripping, oozing disdain for these people who might object to their view of how America must be,” Megyn explained. “[They are] ‘anti-intellectuals’ who are bitter, jealous, and corrosive over their envy for her half.”
Klavan said that while he used to call people like Couric “elites without mirrors” because “they couldn’t see how awful they were,” he now refers to them as “elites without windows” for their inability to “look outside and see” what Trump has done to garner support and President Joe Biden has done to lose it.
“Trump, for all his flaws, gave us four years without a new war, whereas [Biden] has set the world on fire… not just in the Middle East but in the Ukraine,” he said. “They keep telling us that his economics are the greatest, we just don’t know it yet… They keep telling us a crime is down in our cities. I don’t believe it.”
For those reasons, Klavan said Couric might actually be onto something. “When Katie Couric says we’re ‘anti-elite’… of course we’re anti-elite,” he said. “Our elites stink… and we are the people… uprising against a series of lies where they butcher children, forced us to wear masks, forced us to take medicines we didn’t want… [forced us] through years of screwing things up because a little flu passed through town.”
Ultimately, Klavan believes the feeling is mutual. “You don’t like us? We don’t like you either,” he concluded. “We are anti-elite, but only because our elites are so bad.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Klavan by tuning in to episode 769 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.