What follows is the exploration of a puzzle: how can we square Donald Trump’s rhetoric about saving (white) working-class America from an international financial conspiracy with the data we have about his actual electoral base, which suggests that the vast majority of his support on Election Day came from the wealthiest half of US society?

Trump won office promising to eviscerate a “liberal” or “global” elite, a group that he and at least some of his backers continue to see themselves as fighting against. “I was elected,” Trump declared while announcing his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Yet Trump likely owns, at least nominally, millions of dollars in foreign financial assets (until he releases his tax returns, we can’t be sure). If anyone is in a global financial elite, it’s him.