#3 100 days of Trump: What have we learned from a hypocrite?
With Donald Trump, the US has a president who is so unpopular in this country that more than half of Danes have refrained from buying a product because it is American.
And if you get a lump in your throat when you look back on Trump's first 100 days as reinstated president and dread the thought of his docket for the next 100, then you belong to a large majority of Danes.
Donald Trump's hands on the wheel have set the world on a spin, but today we're taking a cautious look at the president through slightly different lenses.
In this week's Compass, host Sigge Winther talks to Associate Professor Silas Harrebye, author of the book 'In Defense of Hypocrisy', about how to distinguish between good and bad hypocrisy and why hypocrisy is not all bad. It comes to a head when we examine whether we can find the strengths in the leadership we see from Donald Trump, who is very much a political hypocrite:
"He says he wants to drain the swamp and that he represents the common man, but he is the opposite. He is very much a part of the elite and has now gathered the entire elite of the tech giants around him," says Silas Harrebye.
This was evident when Trump embraced Elon Musk's Tesla cars at a press event in March, where Trump showed the utmost enthusiasm for a product he has otherwise had a huge opposition to.
The good hypocrite
Although Donald Trump doesn't exactly fit into Silas Harrebye's catalog of 'good hypocrites', hypocrisy is better than its reputation. Because when you ask Silas Harrebye if there is anything productive about hypocrisy, he answers:
"I actually think there can be in the sense that if we dare to admit that we are hypocritical, and we actually regret it, then we have to constantly try to do it a little better."
We see this in our politicians here at home, where the media also plays a major role when the country's sharpest pens focus on hypocrisy and broken promises instead of the political visions and fantasies behind them.
Be it when Lars Løkke seeks the center in Danish politics after decades of blue bloc politics. Or when Mette Frederiksen stands with wet eyes after a visit to a mink farm she herself has closed down. Hypocritical? Yes, hypocritical. But is it exclusively negative?
"It's better to be a hypocritical idealist than to be a consistent cynic. And I'm afraid that in Denmark, we see that politicians are more likely to be consistent and keep their promises, and thus not over-promise. I'd rather have some idealists who dare to think big, but fail along the way," says Silas Harrebye.