“Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?” Like Leslie Bibb’s bluntly-bobbed Kate, I was surprised to hear the president’s name mentioned outrig
“Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?” Like Leslie Bibb’s bluntly-bobbed Kate, I was surprised to hear the president’s name mentioned outright during the third episode of The White Lotus season three.
In the still early days of Donald Trump’s second term, TV has largely fallen into two camps: veiled allegories of political dread in political dramas like Hulu’s Paradise and Netflix’s Zero Day, or explicit commentary on the administration via fast-turnaround late-night shows and Saturday Night Live. Shows like The White Lotus largely live in the demilitarized, in-between zone. In season two, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Cameron (Theo James) couldn’t actually remember if they voted in the last election, much less who for.
But in The White Lotus’s third season, the show gets more overt about its characters’ politics. That third episode features a dinner table conversation in which Kate reveals that her life in Austin includes weekly visits to church. Her childhood friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) feast on this intel, probing her on what it’s like to live among the “bible thumpers.” Says Jaclyn, “If I was just around a bunch of Texans who voted for Trump, I guess I’d just feel a little, you know, alienated.”
Between coy sips of rosé, Kate downplays any awkwardness.“They’re nice people. Really good families,” she says, which leads Laurie to stutter: “Wait. Are—are you a Republican?” Kate says that, while her husband is, she identifies as an independent.
“You didn’t vote for Trump, though, did you?” Laurie asks. Kate laughs, then offers a bless-your-heart stare that indicates her answer would be best left unsaid.
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Series creator Mike White had no way of knowing that his hit drama would be one of the first major shows to address the societal discomfort around a second Trump presidency. The White Lotus was filmed before the 2024 election, and written back in 2022, Bibb confirmed to Variety. (Production on the season was delayed by the 2023 Hollywood strikes.) “I feel like Mike had binoculars into the future, because when we did it, it just didn’t feel [timely anymore],” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, We already did that. That was in the past…. But he’s like a little soothsayer, that Mike White. It feels like we’ve hit a nerve.”
Since airing in early March, the scene has inspired a lively panel discussion on The View. Over on Elon Musk’s X, Breitbart News journalist Alana Mastrangelo said that the White Lotus moment depicts “what it’s like being a closet conservative with uptight liberal friends and having to walk on eggshells around them in order to not kill the vibe of the night, knowing they can get offended at the drop of a hat.”
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