President or Predator?: The Social Construction of Trump in a Divided America

• In Event: Politics, Policies, and Victimization

Abstract

During the presidential election, numerous women accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment and/or assault. Then a presidential candidate, he denied these complaints and said the women were all untruthful—a position has continued to espouse. To explore “who the public believes,” we commissioned YouGov to conduct an opt-in online survey of a national probability sample of 1,000 Americans. Notably, half of Americans (51.0%) believe that “the women are telling the truth when they reported that Mr. Trump sexually harassed or assaulted them” versus 23.1% who sided with the president. Nearly two-thirds (64.9%) state that it was unlikely that all the women were lying, and 3 in 5 Americans (60.5%) believe that if the accusations can be proven, President Trump should be impeached by the U.S. Congress. Informed by research on political psychology (especially Haidt’s The Righteous Mind), the data are explored to see why Americans embrace divergent moral narratives—with some seeing Mr. Trump as a truthful president and others seeing him as a predator unworthy of the office he holds.

Authors

• Teresa C. Kulig, University of Nebraska at Omaha

• Murat Haner, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

• Francis T. Cullen, University of Cincinnati