On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Independent Women’s Forum Senior Policy Analyst Inez Feltscher Stepman joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to reflect on Donald Trump’s presidency and how the institutional distrust he harnessed can be traced back to the Tea Party.
“We have to confront the fact that mistrust in media and in a bunch of our institutions is reasonable,” Stepman said. “Every major mainstream outlet has put out actively false stories about Donald Trump. … It is a complete mistake to think that you can continually draw on that public trust and credit that was once bipartisan while using it for your own ideological and partisan ends forever.”
This distrust, Stepman said, extends beyond faulting the corporate media, Democrats, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other institutions, but it also encompasses a wariness that many have when addressing establishment Republicans who have failed to enact concrete policy changes while in power.
“I think that a huge part of Donald Trump’s appeal was rooted in that contempt, and again we have an example of a set of gatekeepers right in the Republican Party, refusing to examine their own role in creating the whirlwind that brought Donald Trump to power because I would argue that it was a direct consequence of the contempt with which they treated the Tea Party,” Stepman said.
