DESPERATELY SEEKING THE BEST: Bateman doesn't loathe Trump voters!

THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2025

But why did they vote as they did? This nation's population has grown over the years. As an example of what we mean, here are some census figures, starting with the first census:

United States population
1790: 3,929,326
1800: 5,308,483
2020: 331,449,281
2024 (est.): 340,110,988 

For the record, those earlier numbers did include people who were enslaved. Regrading that first census, the leading authority tells us this:

Both Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and President George Washington expressed skepticism over the results, believing that the true population had been undercounted. If indeed an undercount was the result, possible explanations for it include dispersed population, poor transportation links, limitations of contemporary technology, and individual refusal to participate.

Even then, facts were elusive things. At any rate, to quote Van Morrison, "My, how [we] have grown." 

At present, the United States is a large, sprawling nation, spreading across a wide array of culture zones. In the last three presidential elections, tens of millions of American citizens have voted for President Trump:

Votes received by Donald Trump, presidential elections
2016: 62,984,828
2020: 74,223,975
2024: 77,302,580

Many people have voted for President Trump. Here within our own Blue America, a certain question has floated around, generally going like this:

Why would anyone ever have voted for someone like Candidate Trump?

Why did people vote for Candidate Trump? We've long offered a word of caution—there is no single answer. 

Still, various answers to that questions have bubbled up through the years. Once again, we're forced to recall one politically ill-advised attempt at an answer:

CANDIDATE CLINTON (9/9/16): You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call "the basket of deplorables."

[LAUGHTER / APPLAUSE]

Right? 

The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites, that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. 

Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

To watch the tape, click here.

At some point, everyone makes a clumsy or perhaps ill-advised remark. That remark may have helped tilt the 2016 election. 

For the record, Candidate Clinton went on to say that the other half of Trump's supporters did not fit in that basket. Continuing, she added this:

CANDIDATE CLINTON: That other basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change.  It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

So the candidate also said. The first part of her statement got tons of attentions.  The rest got thrown under a bus.

At that point, should even half of Candidate Trump's supporters have been characterized as "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it?"  Here in Blue America, some of us may even be inclined to say that Candidate Clinton was being too generous when she limited that assessment to half of the other guy's crowd.

Some are inclined to be even harsher than Candidate Clinton was! Jason Bateman, a good, decent person like Candidate Clinton, doesn't seem to be one of those people.

Bateman was the featured guest on the first episode of Nicolle Wallace's weirdly named new podcast, The Best People. Bateman has made his career as a high-profile actor—but during the first Covid year, he and two friends launched a podcast which Wallace listens to and admires.

Rather plainly, Jason Bateman is part of Blue America. He isn't a Trump supporter. But as he spoke with Wallace during that first episode, he tended to avoid derogatory comments concerning the tens of millions of people who voted that other way.

At one point, fairly early on, he told Wallace this:

BATEMAN (6/3/25): It’s just a social phenomenon, a political phenomenon that I just can’t get my head around and I don’t want to ignore it. We are all neighbors. We all share this country together. And so, I want to understand it. 

And I know that there’s genuine dissatisfaction with their standing in life, or the system and whatnot. So that’s legit. I’m sensitive to that. I respect that. 

"We are all neighbors," the gentleman said. He also said that "genuine dissatisfaction with their standing in life or the system" is part of the dynamic which lies behind all those votes.

Bateman said that early on. Later, perhaps a bit less generously, he also offered this:

BATEMAN: It’s the people that have put him there, and then put him there again, that really deserve a great deal of responsibility and a talking to! I’m sorry!

And I say that with love. They are our neighbors, as I said before. And I know that they are, you know, deservedly aggrieved and whatnot—but there’s another way to do it. There’s somebody else in the Republican Party that can look after your issues.

And if it makes you sick to vote for a Democrat, great—vote for a Republican! Tons of my friends are Republican. Like, I have no issues with Republicans. It’s this extra step that I think is so unnecessary—to follow blindly.

He has no problem with Republicans. He does have a bit of a problem with Trump voters, even though he once again said that at least some of those people, who he regards as neighbors, are "deservedly aggrieved."

Tons of his friends are Republican? Bateman almost seemed to be pulling the mask off a certain picture of Hollywood! That said, we were struck by the way Bateman refuses to loathe or attack the people with whom he shares this country—the people who kept deciding to vote for Candidate Trump.

They have legitimate grievances, he said. But along the way, we were struck by this fact:

Bateman and Wallace seemed to be completely clueless about what those legitimate grievances might actually be.

Grading on a Blue American curve, we'd say that Bateman was admirably generous concerning the hearts and minds of the tens of millions of neighbors who voted the other way in the last election. Along the way, he mentioned the "deplorables" comment, but he chose not to go there.

Still, he seemed to have no real idea why a person who doesn't belong in some such basket would have voted for Trump. That apparent incomprehension—on the part of both Bateman and Wallace—was, for us, the most striking aspect of this initial episode of this new podcast.

Before we leave you for today, we want to make one key point concerning future elections. As Blue America tries to win future elections, it's important to be clear about this:

Blue America shouldn't be trying to win the least persuadable people among the many Trump voters. As a general matter, Blue America is trying to win the most persuadable members of that rather large group.

Certain Trump voters won't be persuaded to come over and cast a Blue vote. Other Trump voters could be persuaded—but what has been holding them back?

Bateman and Wallace seem to have no idea. They seem to have no idea why 77 million people might have voted for Candidate Trump the last time around. 

We were struck by their apparent inability to list the blindingly obvious reasons which almost surely lay behind a lot of those votes.

That inability leaped out at us as we listened to Bateman and Wallace. So did the name of the podcast itself—the name that Wallace chose.

Tomorrow: Inside the silo, this...