1y ago

Some Voters Think Trump’s a Criminal and Support Him Anyway

nymag.com Some Voters Think Trump’s a Criminal and Support Him Anyway

Polling shows that not all of Trump’s supporters deny he has committed “serious federal crimes.” They seem to be okay with his criminality.

Asked whether they believed Trump has or has not “committed serious federal crimes,” 54 percent of poll respondents replied that he had. But 19 percent of them confirmed they’d still vote for this criminal ex-president in 2024. Along the same vein, 13 percent of those who believe Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results “threatened American democracy” still plan to vote for him next year.

54 comments

This is part of why the GOP has been manufacturing lies about Joe Biden being corrupt so urgently: They can't convince most people that Trump isn't a criminal so they're trying to convince them that both candidates are criminals so it doesn't matter.
- I love how this is so patently obvious about Republican tactics, and just yesterday I had someone trying to argue that this isn't an inherently Republican talking point. "They're all crooks, so they're both the same!"
  You can't convince me that some of them aren't Russian trolls looking to stir dissent and destabilize the nation.
  
  There’s obviously Russian troll farms but when researchers published their memes and other posts, they were often kind of weird and didn’t gain wide reach.
  So, my theory is that we don’t need Russian trolls to destabilize the nation. We have plenty of political marketing firms right here in America that have a deeper cultural understanding and an equal amount of shamelessness.
  
  I’d argue that’s already been done. That’s why we’re here.
  
  Can Russia still afford trolls these days while paying for the war?
- Ah yes! Biden is so corrupt that the GOP had to go after his son, who isn't a politician, in order to get anything on him....
  
  And are still failing to make anything meaningful stick - despite having "mountains of evidence" lol
- Right, because Biden wasn't involved and set up Hunter countless times with his backroom China deals right? Biden hasn't been accused a dozen times long before he was POTUS of inapprotiate shit with women, Hillary wasn't busted with her off the books shit with her home server and emails...RIGHT????? Don't kid yourself.
  
  Small potatoes compared to the opposition. How do we give you a wider perspective?
  
  Countless times?
  Dozens of times?
  The hyperbole isn’t helping you. You might have an argument if you actually stuck to one or two substantive examples, rather than throwing out ridiculous numbers.

For all of you kids out there - back in the Reagan days, the republicans spent a lot of time and money convincing “blue collar” people to vote against their interests. People that would benefit the most from public healthcare, better environmental standards, higher taxes on the obscenely wealthy, and a more just legal system began voting against all those things.
It was as fucking stupid then as it is now, only since the TEA party creation, they’ve gone full batshit and there’s no ideal or central mission to anchor them.
I’m saying it’s been forty years and it’s only gotten much worse. This insane death dance with Trump is the unfortunate result, and they refuse to stop it.
- What you need to understand is that people who voted for Reagan weren't voting to screw themselves; they were scared and wanted a "strong leader" who looked good. Even Gorbachev talked about how magnificent Reagan looked and sounded.
  Don't get me wrong, I consider Reagan one our worst Presidents and a scoundrel, but if you listen to some of his speeches, you'll understand how people would trust him.
  
  Sure. Then you’ve got Donald “cofefe” Trump. They’re baskets of deplorables, plain and simple. Hillary had it right all along.
  
  You can argue that Reagan was an effective president because he did look and communicate the part. Whether you agreed with his policies or not, he was “presidential” and had huge standing both locally and internationally
  https://www.reagan.com/the-great-communicator-ronald-reagan
  Compare that to the ever shrinking Republicans since, where their image and prestige on the world stage is just less and less over time…. Until you have an embarrassment to the nation and five year olds everywhere
- I’m saying it’s been forty years and it’s only gotten much worse.
  Not only has the GOP had forty years to perfect their propaganda skills, they've also used that time to gut education in every state they've gained control in. That has allowed them to undermine the critical thinking skills of a huge swath of the population. In fact, in the 2012 Republican Party of Texas platform they said the quiet part out loud and explicitly opposed the teaching of critical thinking.
  Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Guys, you've got to remember that these are just simple MAGAts. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new GOP. You know... morons.
- Obligatory source.

- Yeah, the subtext there is chilling: a not insignificant proportion of the electorate identifies themselves as people who threaten American democracy.
- It makes complete sense when you realise, that these people WANT to destroy the American democracy.
  
  as long as the 'right peoples' are hurt along the way, it doesn't matter to them if the country implodes or if they or their families get hurt, too.
  
  I guess they hate the countries institutions so much that they’ll burn it all down just to feel it’s warmth

"He may be a crook, but he's our crook! He hates the same people we do. Maybe criminals are simply more efficient haters!"
- This is in no way a defense of Trump, but history shows that right and wrong, criminal or visionary, terrorist or martyr - those are all a question of victors and history. There is every chance they see Trump in the same vein as the founding fathers - all of whom would've been strung up had the war for independence gone the other way.
  They seem to simply be casting their lots with him. Whether he is a criminal or not is irrelevant to them because they believe in his vision. Which is why Trump is more a symptom of the problem than the actual problem. He has tapped into this disaffection better than any other right-winger, but it's clear there is a swell of support for these ideas.
  
  I think it's disingenuous to draw that correlation. Yes, the Founding Fathers were in rebellion against their parent state. That's where the parallels end. Their parent state was also ruling from the other side of the ocean and allowing any representation for the colony's interests. What Trump proposes to do is to go back to that authoritarian rule, but under his control. His base loves that idea and wants to see him be someone like Putin, whom they idolize. Freedom for themselves, and slavery for everyone else.
  I grant you, they see themselves as the patriotic heroes defending what they see as their patriotic stance. But the comparison fails under minimal scrutiny.

Some? Last time I checked it was the overwhelming majority of repubes
- It's about 30% guaranteed support from Republicans. That's the number of True Believers he commands. Trump and the rest are vying for the remaining 70%, but he'll always have that base 30% lead.

Most of his base likes him because he's a bad candidate. They have been trained by their chosen media to desire bad traits and cast uncertainty and doubt on good traits. They love him precisely because he is horrible. If there was a worse candidate than Trump, they'd vote for them instead. In fact many of these people who are already fed up with Trump are going right to RFK because they desire bad traits.

"But if we don't vote Republican, the Democrats will eat babies!!!1!"
I'm so tired of this shit.

*know

And 100% of them need to find a new country to live in and stop trying to turn mine into a fascist hell hole
- I know you think that you can fix ~~him~~ it, that ~~he's~~ it's just in need of your love...
  At what point do you call it quits?
  Update: I now realize that it could be read like I'm talking about Trump. I'm not. I was trying to make it sound like that thing people, who are in abusive relationships, say.

Politics is no different than sports, with people rooting for rapist and murderers because they wear the same colors.

AKA some people are so stupid, you wonder how they can walk and breathe at the same time.

The term “thick as thieves” was created for a reason.
- Also "thick as pig-shit"

Republicans are the party of Law and Order! That's why they support people they think are criminals!

Election season is ramping up. Time to engineer polls to make your base hate the other team's base.
- Are you saying that Trump supporters won’t support him if he’s a criminal?
  
  I'm saying it's election season so they're putting out polls designed to get responses that polarize the democratic base against the republican base. Is that more clear?

54 comments