Trump: It is ok to look out for number one.

Donald Trump de-legitimizes the media.  The crowd roars its approval.

The public doesn't like "presidential" as much as experts thought.  The public likes "authentic", warts and all.

Trump has revealed something that had been obscured amid politicians and the reference group of people who operate within or with the government.   There is a big divide between "the people" and that giant class of insiders that include the media, government officials, experts of all kinds, academics, lobbyists, non-profits, interest groups, business people, and other professionals who interacted closely with government.  

Theoretically the political class includes everyone--all citizens, taxpayers, and voters--but in reality the broad citizen class does not feel a part of that "political class."  Trump gave a name to to those politically active insiders of all persuasions:  The Swamp.   The public isn't in the swamp.  They don't like it. They fear it.  They resent its way of thinking and the way it speaks.

Prior to Trump there was a misunderstanding.  The political class thought people liked and respected the rules of political speech and constitutional checks and balances.   Trump showed that people might think they respect it, but in reality they prefer actually to watch something else.  Something authentic--even if that authentic person says things that cause them to cringe.

The old view: self control, careful lip service to the opposition, courtesy, and diplomacy were all appreciated and necessary.  To be "political" meant that one was careful not to burn bridges.  One pretended respect--sometimes ritualized excessive respect ("the esteemed gentleman from the great state of Oklahoma".)  That political courtesy imbedded the understanding that there were other points of view, held legitimately and fervently by others.  It understood that ones own position and interest existed within a context of other positions and interests.  That was true domestically and internationally.  

The Trump reveal:  the public likes authentic, blunt, interesting talk, with villains denounced and winners who celebrate.  They don't like that "sharing" stuff, that diplomatic talk, that notion that we are first, sure, but first among many.    Trump told them it was a way of thinking that let the rich get richer and the rest of the people get cheated.

That sounded about right.

The media is in the middle.  It mediates.  It is the visible translator between the world of public policy professionals--the Swamp-- and the broader world.  They aren't alone in translating.  Academics write books, policy professional join boards then resign from them, but day to day the face of the complex world of competing interests is the media.  But the media is on the front lines and their very world view is different.  They are global and constitutional and political and respectful of diversity and therefore their every sentence is "fake" because it has embedded in it that point of view.

Trump speaks from a different point of view, which makes the media (except Fox and Breitbart and his own tweets) fake.  Trump and the people in the Trump crowds see things from their point of view.  The point of view.  They embrace looking out for number one, period, not first of many.   Not "fair" to others.  No affirmative action, no groping for diversity, no looking out for the interests of foreigners or refugees or anyone but us.  Regular people.  People without color or ethnicity.  

Donald Trump exposed the huge disconnect between the two worlds.  

The disconnect is partially a matter of interest, of who benefits.   The bipartisan establishment failed to address well enough some of the public concerns over access to the middle class, over education and health care costs, over changes in American demography.   That created the impression that leaders of that class were ignoring their own people.

Trump's nationalism is a response to that.  

Trump also understood the media environment better than did the media.  He tweets.  He uses Facebook.  He speaks plainly and bluntly.  He is interesting, even when he is appalling.   The great body of citizens, of all political persuasions, find political speech boring. The ratings showed it.  They like genuine.  They want authentic.  The mis-cues and supposed gaffs--for saying what people actually privately think--made him interesting and a spokesman saying what a great many people believe.

Trump revealed there are two very different frames for honesty.  Trump says things that are obviously and objectively inaccurate, but he says them extemporaneously and vividly and without apparent filter.   That unfiltered directness makes it "honest and forthright."   This frames the divide.  This means that words spoken from a written speech, or words that place policy into the context of a complex world of competing interests (i.e NY Times, et al.), are "dishonest" per se.  Fake.  The media point of view denies the validity of first person self-interest.  

The media, the academics, the experts have the incapacity of being broad minded.  Trump showed that a great many people define broadmindedness with losing.  Trump validates having a point of view.  Win.