Politics
News Analysis: Trump consistently frames policy around 'fairness,' trading on American frustration
In a sit-down interview with Fox News last month, President Trump and his billionaire “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk framed new tariffs on foreign trading partners as a simple matter of fairness.
“I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging,’” Trump said of a conversation he’d had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I’m doing that with every country.”
“It seems fair,” Musk said.
Trump laughed. “It does,” he said.
“It’s like, fair is fair,” said Musk, the world’s richest person.
The moment was one of many in recent months in which Trump and his allies have framed his policy agenda around the concept of fairness — which experts say is a potent political message at a time when many Americans feel thwarted by inflation, high housing costs and other systemic barriers to getting ahead.
“Trump has a good sense for what will resonate with folks, and I think we all have a deep sense of morality — and so we all recognize the importance of fairness,” said Kurt Gray, a psychology professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the book “Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground.”
“At the end of the day,” Gray said, “we’re always worried about not getting what we deserve.”
In addition to his “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” for tariffs, Trump has cited fairness in his decisions to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, ban transgender athletes from competing in sports, scale back American aid to embattled Ukraine and pardon his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has invoked fairness in meetings with a host of world leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He has suggested that his crusade to end “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs is all about fairness, couched foreign aid and assistance to undocumented immigrants as unfair to struggling American taxpayers, and attacked the Justice Department, the media and federal judges who have ruled against his administration as harboring unfair biases against him.
Trump and Musk — through his “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not a U.S. agency — have orchestrated a sweeping attack on the federal workforce largely by framing it as a liberal “deep state” that either works in unfair ways against the best interests of conservative Americans, or doesn’t work at all thanks to lopsided work-from-home allowances.
“It’s unfair to the millions of people in the United States who are, in fact, working hard from job sites and not from their home,” Trump said.
In a Justice Department speech this month, Trump repeatedly complained about the courts treating him and his allies unfairly, and reiterated baseless claims that recent elections have been unfair to him, too.
“We want fairness in the courts. The courts are a big factor. The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor,” Trump said. “We have to have honest elections. We have to have borders and we have to have courts and law that’s fair, or we’re not going to have a country.”
Before a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this month, Trump complained — not for the first time — about European countries not paying their “fair share” to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, and the U.S. paying too much.
“We were treated very unfairly, as we always are by every country,” Trump said.
Almost exclusively, Trump’s invocations of fairness cast him, his supporters or the U.S. as victims, and his critics and political opponents as the architects and defenders of a decidedly unfair status quo that has persisted for generations. And he has repeatedly used that framework to justify actions that he says are aimed at tearing down that status quo — even if it means breaching norms or bucking the law.
Trump has suggested that unfavorable media coverage of him is unfair and therefore “illegal,” and that judges who rule against him are unfair liberal activists who should be impeached.
The politics of feeling heard
Of course, grievance politics are not new — nor is the importance of “fairness” in democratic governance. In 2006, the late Harvard scholar of political behavior Sidney Verba wrote of fairness being important in various political regimes but “especially central in a democracy.”
Verba noted that fairness comes in different forms — including equal rights under the law, equal voice in the political sphere, and policies that result in equal outcomes for people. But the perception of fairness in a political system, he wrote, often comes down to whether people feel heard.
“Democracies are sounder when the reason why some lose does not rest on the fact that they are invisible to those who make decisions,” Verba wrote. “Equal treatment may be unattainable, but equal consideration is a goal worth striving for.”
According to several experts, Trump’s appeal is in part based on his ability to make average people feel heard, regardless of whether his policies actually speak to their needs.
Gray said there is “distributive fairness,” which asks, “Are you getting as much as you deserve?” and “procedural fairness,” which asks, “Are things being decided in a fair way? Did you get voice? Did you get input?”
One of Trump’s skills, Gray said, is using people’s inherent sense that there is a lack of distributive fairness in the country to justify policies that have little to do with such inequities, and to undermine processes that are in place to ensure procedural fairness, such as judicial review, but aren’t producing the outcomes he personally desires.
“What Trump does a good job at is blurring the line between rules you can follow or shouldn’t follow,” he said. “When he disobeys the rules and gets called out, he goes, ‘Well those moral rules are unjust.’”
People who voted for Trump and have legitimate feelings that things are unfair then give him the benefit of the doubt, Gray said, because he appears to be speaking their language — and on their behalf.
“He’s not just saying that it’s him. He’s saying it’s on behalf of the people he’s representing, and the people he’s representing do think things are unfair,” Gray said. “They’re not getting enough in their life, and they’re not getting their due.”
Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at UC Berkeley and author of “Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism,” said Trump and his supporters have built him up as a leader “interested in fixing the unfairness to the working class.”
But that idea is premised on another notion, even more central to Trump’s persona, that there are “enemies” out there — Democrats, coastal elites, immigrants — who are the cause of that unfairness, Rosenthal said.
“He names enemies, and he’s very good at that — as all right-wing authoritarians are,” Rosenthal said.
Such politics are based on a concept known as “replacement theory,” which tells people to fear others because there are only so many resources to go around, Rosenthal said. The theory dovetails with the argument Trump often makes, that undocumented immigrants receiving jobs or benefits is an inherent threat to his MAGA base.
“The sense of dispossession is absolutely fundamental and has been for some time,” Rosenthal said.
John T. Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, said Trump has “a remarkable capacity for constructing the world in a way that favors him” — even if that’s as the victim — and appears to be an “outlier” among presidents in terms of how often he focuses on fairness as a political motif.
“Certainly since his first term with impeachment, ‘the Russia hoax,’ ‘dishonest media,’ ‘fake news’ and then ‘weaponizing’ of justice — he’s constructed a kind of victim persona, in battle with the deep state, that is now really basic to his interaction with his core MAGA constituency,” Woolley said.
An idea for Democrats
In coming to terms with Trump’s win in November, Democrats have increasingly acknowledged his ability to speak to Americans who feel left behind — and started to pick up on fairness as a motif of their own, in part by zeroing in on mega-billionaire Musk.
In an interview with NPR last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) evoked the idea of unfairness in the system by saying American government is working for rich people like Musk, but not for everyone else. “Everything feels increasingly like a scam,” she said.
She and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have since embarked on a nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, where they have blasted Musk’s role in government and questioned how his actions, or those of Trump, have helped average Americans in the slightest.
“At the end of the day, the top 1% may have enormous wealth and power, but they are just 1%,” Sanders wrote Friday on X. “When the 99% stand together, we can transform our country.”
President Trump has promoted a chain of newly rebranded gas stations across the Philadelphia area with lower gas prices. The New York Times has not been able to get detailed information about who is behind the stations. The Trump administration says it did not fund or subsidize the company.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Kelley Paul is no stranger to the American political scene. As the wife of Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and the daughter-in-law of longtime former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), she has seen her fair share of the campaign trail, emerging as a powerful surrogate during her husband’s 2016 presidential run.
She is also an accomplished writer, speaker, and public relations professional. As America ushers in its 250th anniversary, Paul saw the perfect opportunity to branch out into the world of children’s literature. Recently she sat down with Fox News Digital in Las Vegas at Freedom Fest to discuss her new book, “Good Night, Young American.”
Kelley Paul is the wife of Sen. Rand Paul and author of two books. (Courtesy Kelley Paul)
Paul credits her family for giving her the inspiration for the new project:
“I have to give a lot of credit to my daughter-in-law, Kate. She and our son were over for dinner last summer with our grandson, who was only six months old at the time. And Kate was like, you know, we need more patriotic books for babies. She wasn’t really happy with a lot of the book options she was seeing. And that night at dinner, we kind of played around with some ideas. And I came up with ‘Good Night Young American.’ And a year later, here it is.”
EXCLUSIVE: RAND AND KELLEY PAUL OPEN UP ABOUT 2016 RACE
“Good Night, Young American,” recommended for children ages 4–8, takes kids on a visually and thematically engaging journey through early and colonial history.
“Well, our revolutionary history is such a great adventure, right? So when I came up with the concept that my little boy would start out on the 4th of July with his parents, asking, what is it all about? I knew we’d be celebrating the 250th. Kids ask, what are we really celebrating?
And his dad describes the Declaration of Independence to him in the signing. So I tried to think what is going to appeal to children in this great adventure of our revolution. So when he falls asleep that night, he’s in the crow’s nest of the Mayflower. He is a pilgrim, he’s a colonist, and then he makes friends with all the great revolutionary heroes that we know. So he makes friends with Sam Adams, he joins the Sons of Liberty, he meets at the Green Dragon. This is so exciting for children, right?
It’s visual stuff. He makes friends with Ben Franklin, and he’s flying the kite. Dramatically rides on the midnight ride with Paul Revere. He and his dog, his little dog, are with him for all the adventures. And of course, he crosses the Delaware with George Washington. And I wanted to make the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of it something that was dynamic and exciting visually. So I have him swinging on the Liberty Bell when the declaration is signed.”
Paul worked closely with the illustrator, Marika Monesi, to bring the events of America’s founding to life in an engaging and visually appealing way for children.
The Liberty Bell, originally saved from the British by Lynnport farmer Frederick Leaser, sits in its Philadelphia shrine. (iStock)
“She really captured the excitement on the little boy’s face, his personality, but I worked very close with her,” Paul said. “I wanted there to be a lot of movement, a lot of dynamic images. So, for example, with the Liberty Bell, for kids, a bunch of men standing around writing a document…I wanted to bring it to life. So I said, let’s have him running up to the top of the bell tower in Philadelphia at Freedom Hall and swinging on the Liberty Bell. And she was just such a great artist. With the George Washington scenes, he’s crossing the Delaware because that, again, is so visual. I wanted drive home to children the incredible bravery and courage of our founders, how cold and miserable and hard that war was.
“Also, I love the illustration that she did of the King of England reading the Declaration of Independence. I have to give my husband Rand a little credit there. On the first couple of drafts that she did, Rand was like, ‘He needs to be fatter. King George was famously fat!’ So it was a lot of fun. It was very collaborative.”
KELLEY PAUL ‘EXHAUSTED AND ANGRY’ THAT THOSE WHO HARASSED HER AND HER HUSBAND FACE NO CHARGES
Part of Paul’s motivation for the book was related to the teaching of American history today, and the controversies therein:
“I do think that we’ve gotten away from really celebrating our founders and our heroes. What they were doing in 1776 was incredibly radical, if you think about it. At that time, everyone accepted the divine right of kings. Everyone accepted hereditary rule. And our founders took Enlightenment ideas from John Locke and philosophers, and they turned it into the framework for a government. The idea of self-government and that our rights come from our Creator, that we have inalienable rights that are given to us by God and not from a king. Those were radical ideas of the time.
Historians say an early draft of the Declaration of Independence offered new insight into how Thomas Jefferson refined the nation’s founding document. (Stock Montage/Stock Montage/Getty Images)
I like to say our founders were the first civil rights heroes, the first civil libertarians. And I think our education system has gotten away from that. They don’t view them in the time that they existed, and suddenly now everything is oppressor versus oppressed narrative. And they are labeled more like colonizers or enslavers, and that’s the only view that they’re looked at, and not as human beings who sacrificed their very lives to write the Declaration of Independence, to form this country…it was an incredible, bold, and courageous act, but it was also an act of moral courage and philosophical courage.”
Ultimately, Paul hopes that her books will stimulate the natural curiosity of America’s youth to learn more about their rich history:
Participants carry the City of Cumberland’s “America 250” parade banner down Baltimore Street during the America 250 parade in downtown Cumberland, Maryland, on June 27, 2026. Spectators line both sides of the street as American and Maryland flags lead the procession. (Fox News Digital/ David Marcus)
“Well, I hope that my books, especially with America’s 250, will spark a lot of questions and that they will give a framework for parents to talk to their kids about the founding of this country. And I hope children from a very, very young age will come away with this idea that they are a part of America’s story, that they as Americans can take pride in the heroism of our revolutionary founders. That as Americans, this is all of our story. So that’s really my goal with the books.”
One of the biggest challenges Paul faced was taking big ideas that may be hard for a four or five-year-old to grasp, like the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and distilling them down into an accessible format for kids:
“Well, I try to use language that kids could understand, and very much use simple terms. But if you think about it, it is simple. Our rights come from God. And when he makes friends with Thomas Jefferson, he says, Thomas Jefferson has written this amazing document that says that we can all be free to live our lives the way we choose, and no government can take our rights to, you know, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness away from us.
He also talks about James Madison and the Bill of Rights and the most important right is freedom of speech. That is that no government can tell you what to say or what not to say.”
Rand Paul, who famously puts Constitutional principles front and center in the public square, also played a key role in the book’s thematic development.
Kelley Paul and her husband Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. (Courtesy Kelley Paul)
“Rand has been incredibly supportive. I’m just so grateful and blessed to have had an amazing, now 36-year marriage to Rand Paul. And he was very involved. He would read over the drafts and gave me a lot of, like I said, good advice about things in history that he thought I should include.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
And I’m also just very grateful to be the daughter-in-law of Ron Paul. And so, I wanted these books to be there for our little grandson who I call ‘my favorite little American’ and help him from an early age be educated in the legacy that, the Paul family has in this country.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.
The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.
Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.
“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.
Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”
A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.
The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.
Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from one another.
Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.
Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.
“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”
California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta — whose office has already blocked federal agencies from implementing most of Trump’s election orders in court — called Trump’s firings “deeply troubling,” and said his office “will continue to closely monitor any efforts to weaken our democracy and fight back with every tool at our disposal.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.
Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.
Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to tighten voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.
Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.
Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda remains unclear, experts said.
David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the election commission has always had a “very limited mandate,” can’t dictate policy to the states and has no law enforcement powers — meaning Trump’s dismissals will have little real effect on elections.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship — though that would also have limited effect and would be challenged in court.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”
Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.
Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal election funding, and others lamenting the loss of the ousted commissioners’ deep experience.
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”
In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted.
He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.
Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.
The housing bill, which Trump called a “big yawn” last month, was to become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.
-
North Dakota46 seconds agoWest Fargo attorney named to North Dakota Ethics Commission
-
Ohio8 minutes agoStruggling Ohio county seeks funds to care for 16 kids rescued from squalor and prosecute their family
-
Oklahoma11 minutes agoMartha Lillard, last US polio patient using iron lung, dies at 78 in Oklahoma
-
Oregon16 minutes agoGreater Idaho effort seeks federal help as Oregon lawmakers keep border plan stalled
-
Pennsylvania23 minutes agoGALLERY | The best of Big Boy in central Pennsylvania
-
Rhode Island26 minutes agoHow did Jake Bauer win the 2026 State Amateur? With an all-time comeback
-
South-Carolina31 minutes agoSouth Carolina sees second straight year of declining overdose deaths
-
South Dakota38 minutes agoMN officials warn dogs adopted from South Dakota show ‘high prevalence of canine brucellosis’
