Have you ever looked around Donald Trump’s New York home?

Trump’s possessions include an indoor pool with a white marble floor, a stone orangery and a formal garden pavilion lavishly spread out over an extravagant 28,322-square-foot mansion — most of which is draped in gold.

Opulence is a key part of the Donald Trump brand. At first glance, this level of wealth may appear to separate him from the average U.S. citizen, but this perspective undervalues the extent to which we celebrate both the achievement and prospect of economic success.

The American Dream is the solution to poverty. This rags-to-riches ideal drives the quintessential definition of Americana enshrined on Liberty Island. The famous message proclaims: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Fantastic wealth, and the idea that absolutely anyone can achieve it, has always been the primary objective and allure of the United States.

Class, on the other hand — as distinct from wealth — is entirely exclusionary. American author Paul Fussels describes that what distinguishes the U.S. upper class is the manner in which their money was generated. In Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, Fussel notes that “Among the upper orders, the very rich, being born into and accustomed to wealth, take it for granted; their lives are spent in elegant but inconspicuous consumption.” According to Fussel, what separates the upper class from the general populace is being born into their wealth. This definition transforms class from something potentially achievable to something with rigid immovability akin to a caste system. This is what made Trump’s persona relatable and the establishment’s inaccessible.

Contrast Trump’s persona with just about every other U.S. political figure, whose immediate descriptor is not wealth, but class. A quick view into the life of any establishment Democratic or Republican politician reveals a sense of proper posh aesthetic — one that embraces the old money values of the aristocratic elite. Unlike Trump, they know to not make their multiple million dollar homes public, with golden faucets and marble pools. They know not to flaunt their wealth to obnoxious levels. This is a skill usually picked up by those who have been born into money. Whereas, Trump represents “inclusive” wealth obtainment.

This inclusivity, however, is a falsehood. While anyone in the U.S. can hypothetically become rich, everyone cannot, and the latter is much more likely.

Trump’s persona is a fundamental misdirection, as his money is inherited. He received a total of 413 million from the death of his siblings and his father. Furthermore, an investigation from the New York Times identified that the family “set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents” in a successful effort to make improper tax deductions, adding millions to the family account. Such a process left the family with even higher amounts of intergenerational wealth, making Trump no different economically than the establishment he claims to be separate from.

Furthermore, wealth inequality in the U.S. has grown increasingly in the last few decades. The Gini coefficient indicates that income inequality has grown by 20 percent between the years 1980 and 2016, with upper-income households garnering wealth at a faster pace. In fact, the proportion of Americans who live in middle-income households has declined from 61 percent in the 1970s, to 51 percent in 2019. Lower and middle class incomes have increased by 43 percent and 49 percent between 1970 and 2018, but upper incomes have increased by 64 percent. These numbers indicate the limited power and influence that the middle and lower classes have.

Americans wish to escape this, and it is the combination of Trump's misdirections of economic equality of opportunity and of his upbringing that give him his charm from the American perspective. As author Franz Lebirwitz notes, Trump is “a poor person's idea of a rich person ... All that stuff he shows you in his house – the gold faucets – if you won the lottery, that's what you'd buy.” To some, Donald Trump’s rise to power was actually endearing and pseudo-democratic.

In this regard, Trump’s persona as understood by the many U.S. citizens that revere him is based on false premises. It is this disparity between reality and how one is perceived by the public that must be tapped into as a new generation of political figures begin to enter the arena.

Donald Trump is an interesting symptom of many things, benefiting from the worst elements of racism, capitalism and fear. However, what is often overlooked is the manner in which he was able to establish a classless persona that was in no way indicative of his true economic background. Also overlooked is how he leveraged a pervasive myth of economic equality of opportunity to his very real political benefit.

Neither the realities of Trump or of U.S. income inequality and upward mobility matter when it comes to U.S. politics. Politics is not reality. Politics will always be profoundly, and exclusively, based on optics. Donald Trump is a lesson in optics and the importance and power of presentation over reality.