Analysis | The last thing Trump will do is rebuild trust in institutions (2024)

There was an element of the discussion, though, that hasn't attracted much attention. It centered on a question from Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” the show on which the interview first aired.

“Americans have lost a lot of trust in institutions, and I think there’s been a lot of discussion, especially online, especially with young people,” Campos-Duffy began. “How do we rebuild that trust in institutions — the CIA, the FBI — all those institutions?”

“You’re right,” Trump replied — but before he could answer, Campos-Duffy jumped ahead.

“Some people think that one way to build trust is to declassify things that everyone’s talking about,” she said. Then she offered a rapid-fire list of things he might be interested in declassifying, putatively to restore trust in institutions.

“Would you declassify the 9/11 files?” she asked, to which Trump replied, “Yeah.”

“Would you declassify JFK files?” she continued, again yielding a “yeah.” But this time, Trump appended: “I did. I did a lot of it.”

This is a good reminder that Trump had the opportunity to declassify this information previously but — particularly in the case of material related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy — didn’t.

“Would you declassify the Epstein files?” Campos-Duffy asked, referring to the disgraced financier who was linked to some prominent Americans.

“Yeah,” Trump replied. “Yeah, I would.”

Next up was a question from host Pete Hegseth … at least in the program that aired. A fuller version of the interview posted on YouTube shows that Trump had more thoughts on Epstein.

“I guess I would,” Trump continued in the YouTube version. “I think that less so because, you know, you don’t know — you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”

Among those who have been linked to Epstein, of course, is former president Donald Trump. No wonder he’s cautious about reminding Campos-Duffy that, hey, if you declassify things, some people might get the wrong impression.

“Do you think that would restore trust? Help restore trust?” Campos-Duffy asked.

“I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others,” Trump responded. There was one area in which he wasn’t worried about releasing information: Epstein’s death while in custody. Trump also volunteered that he would declassify documents related to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The unaired Epstein awkwardness aside, Campos-Duffy’s question and Trump’s response are revealing. It is clearly true that many Americans view major institutions with skepticism and that this is particularly true among many younger Americans. It is also true that Trump has long stoked and leveraged this perception and that there is no reason to think that he would do much of anything to combat it.

Trump’s rhetoric consistently amplifies the idea that powerful interests are working against average Americans — though he usually narrows his examples to how he claims they are working against him. America under a non-Trump president is always a place on the brink of collapse; America under President Trump is a place of exceptionality and wonder, save for the occasional pandemic.

This idea that no institution can be trusted — not science, not military leaders who disagree with him, not teachers and certainly not the media — is a common feature of authoritarian political leaders. Erode confidence in civil organizations and you can strengthen confidence in yourself. This has been Trump's playbook from the outset.

It is particularly useful for Trump in the moment because of its appeal to younger independent voters. President Biden’s support among younger Americans fell quickly during his first year in office and he is faring worse in current polling than most recent Democratic presidential candidates. This is certainly in part because younger Americans are less likely to be engaged in political systems and, therefore, more likely to be willing to view his candidacy with skepticism. Among those most invested in the political process, Biden fares better.

It’s not the case that younger Americans are dramatically more skeptical of institutions across the board. Polling from the General Social Survey, a national poll conducted every two years, shows that there are certain institutions in which younger Americans have lower confidence, like the military, religion and the press. In some cases, as with Congress, they have more than Americans 65 and up. (The categories centered on American government are indicated with gray boxes.)

Looking solely at those 40 and under, there are often partisan divides. But independents — including independents who lean toward one party or the other — are never the group that indicates the most confidence in any institution. They are always the group that expresses the least confidence in governmental institutions.

This view shows up elsewhere. Last month, Siena College published polling conducted for the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer looking at views in swing states. Younger respondents were more likely than older ones in those states to say that the American political and economic system needs major changes or to be torn down completely.

The level of support for Trump among younger respondents in those states was correlated to the extent they believed that Trump’s promises to upend the system would be good or bad for the country.

For Trump, restoring confidence in the institutions Campos-Duffy mentioned — the CIA and the FBI — means little more than ensuring they are effecting his will. Restoring confidence in the government at large means that he is president and he is empowered to overhaul the federal bureaucracy to install loyalists wherever possible.

He’s happy to agree to release documents about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Kennedy assassination not because he thinks this would somehow increase trust in institutions — it almost certainly would have the opposite effect — but because he knows that claiming these files need to be released is itself a way to heighten distrust in the government. What are they hiding, anyway?

And the more he can make people, young or old, skeptical of the government and the current president, the greater the chances he can return to the White House. Once back in the White House, he will be empowered to rebuild the government in a way that at least one person can have complete confidence in what it is doing: himself.