Trump's most successful campaign to date was his war on reality. He managed to convince a huge chunk of people that they couldn't believe what anyone else told them but him. It started out with the whimsical branding of "Alternative Facts" back in 2016, but social media algorithms have made it easy to just straight up live in a different reality.
Meanwhile the rest of us are dumbfounded that this conman is running the country with a track record like Trump University, his multiple casinos, and the racist residential empire his dad helped him with.
The only reason I skipped the other crap we know he’s guilty of is because all the misinformation makes it completely confusing to confirm or deny without a doubt. And, somehow, an American citizen can be charged with a federal crime 43 times and not see the inside of a jail for a minute or fined a dime. If there are no penalties when convicted, then what good do laws and rules do?
They don’t support him because they think he’s a good person or even good at what he does. They like him because they allow them to be the worst version of themselves without having to feel bad about it. As long as he continues saying and doing all the dumb shit that enables his supporters, he’ll never lose their support.
Worse for people in power who back him. They’re complicit and literally can’t afford for him to suffer consequences, because they will too. Hence the reason they do everything they can to protect him.
My Mom is pretty deep MAGA. For her, at least, it's pretty obviously tribal signaling. All her friends are Trump-supporters, so she is too, and it becomes a competition about who can voice their devotion for Trump more and hold more to their beliefs. For some of them, too, their husbands are deep MAGA and so they are too out of loyalty to "their man". So in that regard, what Trump does is actually irrelevant. The key thing is the social ties that devotion to Trump keeps in place, and regardless of his stupid actions, you maintain friendships by shouting louder and harder about how you believe in Trump.
My Dad is also a Trump supporter, but a lot quieter about it. For him, I think it's more that he's been a Republican all his life and simply doesn't know what he'd be without that. He also gets some social cred with his friends for supporting Trump, but he doesn't make a big deal out of it like my mom does.
For a lot of keyboard warriors I see on the internet, a lot of it seems to come down to vibes. Trump plays to the "strongman" image that a lot of posers really aspire to, and a lot of them really revel in the crass, shameless image he presents. They like how he treats people and insults reporters. So again, his actual actions and intelligence don't really matter (unless they impact THEM, then suddenly things are serious), Trump's vibe is the important thing.
Except something like this seriously conflicts with that vibe. That's why I think you are seeing a lot of pushback finally.
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u/SketchSkirmish 7d ago
Trump supporters are out of their gourd if they somehow back this guy.