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Donald Trump’s destructive economic policies are wreaking havoc on wallets and setting 401(k)s ablaze. And in an apparent effort to deflect criticism over his incoherent and illogical stewardship of the U.S. economy, the president and some of his prominent supporters have pushed the idea that, whatever else he’s doing, Trump is taking a stand for American masculinity.
That was the subtext of Trump’s announcement last Thursday of an executive order to boost the U.S. coal industry. As The New York Times noted, Trump used men in hard hats in the background as a “masculine symbol” and “repeatedly referred to the burly men who surrounded him, joking about whether the stage could handle their collective weight and about arm wrestling several of them.” He portrayed coal miners almost as if they were mindless drones, claiming, “You could give them a penthouse on 5th Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal.”
He also went on to claim that Hillary Clinton, his 2016 rival, was “gonna put them in a high-tech industry where you make little cellphones and things,” and later at an event that evening, he claimed coal miners “don’t want to build cellphones with their big strong hands.”
For the record, two-thirds of Americans want the United States to transition away from fossil fuels like coal toward cleaner energy sources. And even some coal-loving Republicans concede that Trump’s executive order won’t bring back coal production, Politico reports.
But Trump’s underlying message seemed pretty clear: He is willing to degrade the U.S. economy, but at least he can bring back machismo and coddle some hypermasculine egos.
And many in the MAGA world seem to be locking in on that vibe.
In a Fox News interview Monday, pro-Trump columnist Batya Unger-Sargon claimed that Trump’s tariffs are necessary because “we shipped jobs that gave men who work with their hands for a living and rely on brawn and physicality off to other countries to build up their middle class.”
Fox News host Jesse Watters agreed with Unger-Sargon later that evening, claiming:
When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman. Studies have shown this. Studies have shown this. And if you’re out working, like building robots like Harold, you are around other guys. You’re not around HR ladies and lawyers that gives you estrogen.
Far-right influencer Vish Burra, a former staffer for disgraced former Rep. George Santos, used a similarly misogynistic justification in a social media post, claiming, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.” Burra also suggested that competing with women “for REAL JOBS will be over” and that as a result of Trump’s tariff policies, “kitchens will be filled and sandwiches will be made” and “fertility rates will go to the moon.”
Far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos endorsed Trump’s tariffs with the claim that “men are depressed and addicted and broken” because of “BS email jobs” and that “white Americans will love working in factories again.” And right-wing influencer Liz Wheeler peddled similar hypermasculine schlock when she claimed that the tariffs are needed specifically because men have lost “the dignity of work.”
What else would you expect from an overtly misogynistic movement? Of course, many reputable economists, like Heather Boushey, who recently wrote for MSNBC, believe Trump’s tariffs are not going to do anything to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. So these MAGA ideas about Trump’s tariffs sparking some kind of renaissance of “masculinity” as a consequence of a manufacturing boom sound like far-right fantasies more than anything. But these unhinged assertions also send what I believe to be a rather offensive message to American men: that their manhood is defined, above all else, by their ability to perform grunt work.