Frederica Freyberg:
In Racine, Donald Trump’s visit this week marked his third trip to Wisconsin this year, and we will see much more of him with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month. What a ride it has been since he first entered the race for president in 2016. It was at that time we discussed his nascent run with UW-Stevens Point professor of political science John Blakeman. We check back in with him now. And nice to see you, professor.

John Blakeman:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So of course, Donald Trump won Wisconsin and the presidency in 2016, but we talked a lot then about how he was leading with how it would be a rigged election. And clearly that still figures prominently in his messaging.

John Blakeman:
Yes, that is absolutely true. The fact that so many federal and state judges dealt with different, different cases concerning the 2020 election and, and it still resonates so strongly against a good percentage of — within the electorate, just strikes me as completely bizarre. You know, and it’s something that political scientists are studying but no one is really able to fully explain why this — “the big lie,” as it’s called, has become so entrenched in a part of the electorate.

Frederica Freyberg:
In Racine this week, he continued to say that he did a lot better in Wisconsin in 2020 than in 2016. He did not. He lost to Joe Biden. Do voters just chalk this and other kind of fact challenged comments to Trump being Trump and does that matter?

John Blakeman:
Well, I — part of it is, yes, Trump being Trump. And he’s just a different type of political candidate. I know that doesn’t help people necessarily understand it, but there’s really good qualitative research coming out now based on in-depth interviews with a wide range of voters. And for a lot of really strong Trump supporters, the truthfulness doesn’t necessarily matter. For them, what matters is he’s sort of giving it back to political elites. He’s sort of putting them in the hot seat. He’s embarrassing them and that’s what really hardcore Trump supporters like. It’s — the truthfulness doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that he’s going after people who they think have an outsized control over the political system.

Frederica Freyberg:
The other or one other thing that we spoke about together in 2016 was rural rage, with immigration the leading issue there. How has that changed over these past two cycles?

John Blakeman:
I think over the past two election cycles, it’s become much more entrenched in rural areas. I mean, a Pew polling and I think PRI both show that over 60% of rural voters typically rank immigration as their top one or two national issues that they focus on. They don’t encounter immigrants as much as urban or suburban voters do, and it could just be the place boundedness, the fact that they don’t interact with non-citizens, migrant workers so much, immigrants, that probably is one of the main reasons that affects their views on immigration. But you know, support for building Trump’s wall on the southern border is much, much stronger in rural areas than it is in urban and suburban areas, and again, that’s one of those — it’s sort of an oddity especially in rural areas that are far removed from the southern border, like Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas. You know, Minnesota and the Dakotas, North Dakota obviously share an international border but the immigration problems in the north are not nearly as severe and dramatic as in the South.

Frederica Freyberg:
Interesting. Well, when we speak again in eight years, I hope it’s sooner but what do you think we will have seen then?

John Blakeman:
I hate to predict. I will be optimistic. I think the Republican Party will pack back a little bit towards center-right where it historically is. The Trump faction within the Republican Party won’t be nearly as strong. Eight years from now, there’s probably got to be a successor to Donald Trump in the Republican Party, and that successor, who knows who it will be, but I will predict that our politics will tack back towards the center and become a little more even keel.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right.

John Blakeman:
Don’t hold me to that, though.

Frederica Freyberg:
Oh, I’m going to. Professor John Blakeman, thanks very much.

John Blakeman:
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.