Documentaries about the phenomenon of Donald Trump are often overcome by the sheer horror of the man, what he has done and – especially among those broadcast in the runup to the 2024 US election – what he may be planning to do in the future. Sometimes, however, they sidestep this trap and treat the subject itself with the sober consideration that it, rather than the man, deserves.
Into the latter category falls Trump: A Second Chance? which, like all the best documentaries, ploughs the harder furrow. Here, Maga supporters are not treated as one undifferentiated “basket of deplorables” but interviewed – at length, in the case of Trump superfan Rich Frazier – as individuals representing separate strands of Trump’s base. Frazier was a Democrat-voting blue-collar worker at his local Goodyear factory. It once employed 2,700 people. Now it has 500. He is part of the huge swathe of citizens who have in effect been cut out of the American dream of self- and family-betterment as jobs have disappeared abroad; they feel alienated from a political system that has long seemed to ignore them and were ripe for the picking by a man who promised to do everything differently. Now Frazier travels the country as a Front Row Joe – one of the devoted fans, of whom we meet several, who sit up close to Trump at every rally and cheer their hero on. “I want control of my life,” says Frazier, and there is not anger but desperation in his tone.
