Trump’s ‘promised land’ of white masculine economic success

Populist campaign rhetoric is about making grandiose and demagogic statements. The more ambitious and adaptive a candidate’s message is, the more it resonates with different kinds of voters. Donald Trump’s successful campaign relied on his famous slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. Its power is in the temporal scope of its promises, which invited white Americans to access their ‘happy place’ in the past, when America was great, and promised them that he would make that imagined past their future. Trump’s past and future, I suggest, summon a promised land of white masculine economic productivity.