Explain how Trump has so much support (1 Viewer)

[Bayouboy]

I would like some layman answers to the question "How does Trump have so much support, right now"? The final two word are important context.

I somewhat understand how he became a "force" prior to the 2016 election. There were many factors that allowed him to gain steam. Anti-establishment and not being a true politician was a big turn on to some voters on the right at the time. He talked a good game and somehow found a way to the Presidency despite acting "unpresidential". Trump's time in office had some victories for the Republicans and the economy was humming prior to COVID.....but the shirt show that happened on a daily basis with him firing executive staff (that didn't agree with him) and the overall chaos that was the White House certainly should've had an effect on his supporters. This was all BEFORE losing the 2020 election and what ensued. What happened after the 2020 election is well documented and, in my opinion, should have buried him as a candidate for office for eternity.

With ALL of what happened since the 2020 election, how can he still have half of the country (give or take) as supporters? Had all the election denying, countless gaffs, and the attempt to circumvent the Constitution had not occurred and had he regrouped and formed a strategy to compete in 2024, I could see a lot of his supporters continuing to follow him and his message. But I can't get how so many Americans can overlook what happened in front of their own eyes. I am truly bewildered.

I realize this is a mostly left leaning community, so maybe you folks do not have a clue either but would like to hear opinions. Especially, if you still support Trump through all of the mess.

 

[coldseat]

Neither side of the dug in voters seems capable of looking in the mirror objectively and seeing how far they are moving away from the other - just for the sake of separating themselves from the other, thereby exacerbating the divide... No matter how much evidence there is to the contrary... It's always the other sides' fault... Which also contributes to the team sport mentality... and keeps us on the turd roller coaster of POTUS choices we keep getting saddled with. It's like one side says - "we want abc policy" and the other immediately says - "what's the complete opposite of that? - Yeah, we want xyz policy" This mentality is what's creating the parties and candidates we have. Keep up the good work.

Let's just pick the Democrats that are sane and roll with them for a while until Republicans return to sanity. Easy peasy.

 

[Optimus Prime]

@Optimus Prime
Trump has his dedicated base as you clearly know, but do you agree with me that this is all the support he will get? That's his ceiling? (Reflecting back...) With Biden as the other candidate Trump had a chance of picking up some additional people who might have voted for him in November. Yet with Harris as his opponent I think he is doomed.
Agree?

Who knows?

One of the things I've learned about Donald Trump is never underestimate him or the rabid devotion of his base, or the size of his base (or rather the amount of people who aren't full on MAGA but will 'hold their nose' and vote for Trump due to taxes, abortion, anti 'woke', supreme court etc.)

After the Mexicans are rapists and murderers, attacking gold star families, 'I like people who weren't captured' I never would have thought he would have won a single primary much less the nomination

When it came out that he stiffed basically every vendor and contractor he ever worked with, and the 'grab em by the pursey' Access Hollywood tape was released I never would have thought that he would win the presidency

After the chaos of his administration, lies starting day one 'the biggest crowd ever to see an inauguration' ending with over 30K lies by the end, Charlottesville, kids in cages, the first impeachment, shredding political norms, empowering and emboldening racists, sexists, xenophobes and his covid response, half a million Americans died who didn't have to (remember when the GOP said Biden was unfit and should be impeached over the four deaths of the Afghanistan withdrawal?) I never would have thought that Trump would get, what, 8 or 9 million more votes than he did in 2016

After Jan 6th, the second impeachment, the election lies, the Jean Carroll verdict, the NY verdict to the tune of over 400 million dollars, the 90+ felony charges, the 34 felony convictions I never would have thought that Trump would become the runaway nominee again

But here we are

Common political saying, "Never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy"

Trump could get caught with both at the same time today and still get tens of millions of votes

There is an Obama like energy and enthusiasm surrounding Harris, hopefully that grows with the Walz pick and convention bump

I certainly hope that Trump is doomed on election day

But as with all things Trump, who knows?

 

[Optimus Prime]

This article is from Fox News' Juan Williams
==============================

At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?

Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?

How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?

How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”

Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”

Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”

Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.

“Beginning in the early 2010s — and accelerating during the presidency of Donald J. Trump…” The New York Times noted earlier this year, “white voters without a degree, increasingly moved toward the Republican Party. Nearly two-thirds of all white, non-college voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.”

This is the heart of Trump supporters who told YouGov pollsters they believe Trump is telling the truth about Haitian immigrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.”

The YouGov polls also found that 80 percent of Trump supporters also buy his lie that Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” into the U.S. I wrote a 2018 book about Trump’s history of racism. Vice President Harris echoed the book’s research in talking last week of Trump’s racist past. She pointed back to his participation in the “birther” lie, the incendiary claim that the first Black president, President Obama, had not been born in the U.S.

Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”

In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”

Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”................

https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/4890931-trump-racism-voters-support/

 

[Lapaz]

This article is from Fox News' Juan Williams
==============================

At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?

Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?

How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?

How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”

Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”

Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”

Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.

“Beginning in the early 2010s — and accelerating during the presidency of Donald J. Trump…” The New York Times noted earlier this year, “white voters without a degree, increasingly moved toward the Republican Party. Nearly two-thirds of all white, non-college voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.”

This is the heart of Trump supporters who told YouGov pollsters they believe Trump is telling the truth about Haitian immigrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.”

The YouGov polls also found that 80 percent of Trump supporters also buy his lie that Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” into the U.S. I wrote a 2018 book about Trump’s history of racism. Vice President Harris echoed the book’s research in talking last week of Trump’s racist past. She pointed back to his participation in the “birther” lie, the incendiary claim that the first Black president, President Obama, had not been born in the U.S.

Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”

In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”

Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”................

https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/4890931-trump-racism-voters-support/

I think casting the huge net to characterize an entire population is ridiculous. So what if an immigrant ate a cat? There are U.S. citizens that have eaten cats. If one or even a few Haitian immigrants misbehaved, that doesn't justify implying that all Haitian immigrants will commit the same crime, any more than all U.S. citizens are going to eat cats.

 

[brandon]

“Beginning in the early 2010s — and accelerating during the presidency of Donald J. Trump…” The New York Times noted earlier this year, “white voters without a degree, increasingly moved toward the Republican Party. Nearly two-thirds of all white, non-college voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.”

More evidence that the trade school push has an ulterior motive.

 

[Taurus]

This article is from Fox News' Juan Williams
==============================

At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?

Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?

How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?

How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”

Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”

Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”

Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.

“Beginning in the early 2010s — and accelerating during the presidency of Donald J. Trump…” The New York Times noted earlier this year, “white voters without a degree, increasingly moved toward the Republican Party. Nearly two-thirds of all white, non-college voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.”

This is the heart of Trump supporters who told YouGov pollsters they believe Trump is telling the truth about Haitian immigrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.”

The YouGov polls also found that 80 percent of Trump supporters also buy his lie that Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” into the U.S. I wrote a 2018 book about Trump’s history of racism. Vice President Harris echoed the book’s research in talking last week of Trump’s racist past. She pointed back to his participation in the “birther” lie, the incendiary claim that the first Black president, President Obama, had not been born in the U.S.

Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”

In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”

Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”................

https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/4890931-trump-racism-voters-support/

Juan? You sweet summer child. You do understand that racism absolutely does not move the needle, right? Those voters are themselves racists or just don't care if minorities get the shaft so long as it benefits them. Even if that benefit is an illusion of superiority.
If you want to get rid of Cheato, go after his clear and obvious mental decline.

Dude doesn't know what state he's in half the time, let alone which city. He babbles like a toddler and his trains of thought are greased locomotives.

The great crisis of his tenure completely unmanned him. He lost it. Repeat. LOST. IT. And you all treated it like a normal thing.

It is NOT NORMAL for the President of the m-f'in United States to retreat into fantasy when confronted with a cisis.

Remember "Fifteen cases..and it's going down"? Remember "It'll be gone by April, like magic!"

A man with the mothersucking nuclear football invoked "magic" out loud. And did y'all call him on it? No. Just more "Crazy old Donald" You alleged "journalists" disgust me. You will all deserve whatever shallow grave awaits you in a second Trump Administration.

 

[Bayouboy]

It's like we are living in the twilight zone. The Republican candidate for President is routinely saying the dumbest shirt. He said "they are eating the dogs and cats. they are eating the pets" in a debate viewed by 60 million people. They can't even denounce a guy they support that called himself "the black nazi"!!! One thing after the other. It's like a non-stop shirt show, yet nothing fazes his supporters. It's all NORMALIZED.......but it's far, far from normal!!!

How, how can so many people. Tens of millions of people. Just ignore what's sitting in front of them? Character does not matter. My brain can't understand it.

In a normal world, Harris (or ANY other candidate) would have a double-digit, insurmountable lead. Yet we are in a dead heat. Unbelievable.

 

[efil4]

It's like we are living in the twilight zone. The Republican candidate for President is routinely saying the dumbest shirt. He said "they are eating the dogs and cats. they are eating the pets" in a debate viewed by 60 million people. They can't even denounce a guy they support that called himself "the black nazi"!!! One thing after the other. It's like a non-stop shirt show, yet nothing fazes his supporters. It's all NORMALIZED.......but it's far, far from normal!!!

How, how can so many people. Tens of millions of people. Just ignore what's sitting in front of them? Character does not matter. My brain can't understand it.

In a normal world, Harris (or ANY other candidate) would have a double-digit, insurmountable lead. Yet we are in a dead heat. Unbelievable.

tribalism. its really that simple.

Think of it as "early religions". Once you have picked a side, thats it.

 

[CoolBrees]

You are assuming people pay attention.

They don't.

95% of the stupid shirt Trump says or does is not reported on by sympathetic news sources. And anything that is potentially damaging that might breakthrough the mediasphere (Arlington National immediately springs to mind), they get out ahead of it and say its all lies before it permeates. So when this new information gets to them, they have already heard it is false from the horses mouth (figure of speech, not necessarily from Ann Coulter).

 

[LA - L.A.]

It's like we are living in the twilight zone. The Republican candidate for President is routinely saying the dumbest shirt. He said "they are eating the dogs and cats. they are eating the pets" in a debate viewed by 60 million people. They can't even denounce a guy they support that called himself "the black nazi"!!! One thing after the other. It's like a non-stop shirt show, yet nothing fazes his supporters. It's all NORMALIZED.......but it's far, far from normal!!!

How, how can so many people. Tens of millions of people. Just ignore what's sitting in front of them? Character does not matter. My brain can't understand it.

In a normal world, Harris (or ANY other candidate) would have a double-digit, insurmountable lead. Yet we are in a dead heat. Unbelievable.

We're being told it's a dead heat. We won't actually know if that's true until after all the votes are counted.

 

[Optimus Prime]

For many people, especially those leaning left, Donald Trump’s disqualifications to be president seem obvious, prompting some to question: How could anyone still vote for Trump?

Some of the evidence Trump’s critics cite include his two impeachments, multiple criminal indictments at the state and federal levels and a felony conviction. Opponents also say that Trump is a threat to democracy, a misogynist, racist, a serial liar and a rapist.

About 78% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independent voters say that Trump broke the law when he allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election results. But less than half of Republicans think he did anything wrong.

I am an anthropologist of peace and conflict, and I have been studying what I call the Trumpiverse since 2015, when Trump descended a golden escalator and announced his candidacy for president. I later wrote a related book in 2021, called “It Can Happen Here.”

More recently, I have been examining toxic polarization – and ways to stop it. Many efforts to reduce people’s polarized views begin with an injunction: Listen and understand.

To this end, I have attended Trump rallies, populist and nonpartisan events and meetings where Democrats and Republicans connect and talk. Along the way, I have spoken with Trump supporters ranging from the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, faithful to moderate “hold the nose and vote for him” conservatives.

And indeed, many on the left fail to understand who Trump voters are and how they vary. Trump’s base cannot simply be dismissed as racist “deplorables”, as Hillary Clinton famously said in 2016, or as country bumpkins in red MAGA hats. Trump voters trend older, white, rural, religious and less educated. But they include others outside those demographic groups.

Many people have thoughtful reasons for voting for Trump, even if their reasoning – as is also true for those on the left – is often inflamed by populist polarizers and media platforms.

Here are five key lines of reasoning that, in varying combinations, inform Trump voters’ choice............

Why do people still back Trump, after everything? 5 things to understand about MAGA supporters’ thinking

Despite Trump’s criminal record and other controversies, his supporters still see him as someone who is tough on immigration and good for the economy, an anthropologist who studies polarization finds.

theconversation.com

 

[Lapaz]

We're being told it's a dead heat. We won't actually know if that's true until after all the votes are counted.

It may not be a dead heat, but I see some Trump bumper stickers, and that takes cohones. I'm in deep red Alabama, but I still think people would be ashamed to admit they support Trump so it makes me uncomfortable.

I think Trump's support is almost all cultural, despite polls saying the leading reasons are economy and immigration, Harris has a much better case on both of those. The economy is great, and the immigration bill would solve most of that problem. Harris should acknowledge that inflation and related high interest rates caused many financial problems for families, but then point out that inflation is way down to near normal levels and interest rates have started to decrease, so Biden's economic approach is working, especially compared to the rest of the advanced world. She shouldn't run from it, but rather point to its successes, while acknowledging that it took a while to fix the mess they inherited. If that message would sink in, or can be acknowledged, then only cultural reasons are left, whether that's fear of white replacement, or going too far on other progressive cultural policies. I think Harris should continue to advocate centrist cultural policies to win-over those centrists that are still waffling and considering Trump. She also needs to clarify her economic and immigration approach. I see a lot of abortion ads, but I think most already know that she'll be way better for abortion rights, but we aren't getting enough information on the cultural, economic, and immigration plans, and also point out how bad Trump will be on those fronts.

 

[LA - L.A.]

It may not be a dead heat, but I see some Trump bumper stickers...

Millions of people will vote for Trump. That still doesn't make it a dead heat.

, and that takes cohones. I'm in deep red Alabama, but I still think people would be ashamed to admit they support Trump so it makes me uncomfortable.

That was only true leading up to the election in 2016. The majority of Trump supporters have been very loud and proud since then.

I think Trump's support is almost all cultural,...

A lot of people, if not most, act mostly out of emotion as opposed to reason. That includes voting.

 

[MT15]

I saw a post about a young gay man, 27 yo or so and studying for his masters in music, who is a proud Trump voter. He wrote in Bernie in 2016 and voted for Biden in 2020 but has now convinced himself that Trump will prevent wars. This is the faction that has worried me - the misogynistic Bernie Bros. The amount of pretzel logic needed to convince this man to vote for Trump is astonishing. The hatred of women and the entitlement is really strong. I just hope that there aren’t too many of them.

But misogyny has been my main fear. Because, at least online, misogyny is very prominent these days.

 

[bird]

I saw a post about a young gay man, 27 yo or so and studying for his masters in music, who is a proud Trump voter. He wrote in Bernie in 2016 and voted for Biden in 2020 but has now convinced himself that Trump will prevent wars. This is the faction that has worried me - the misogynistic Bernie Bros. The amount of pretzel logic needed to convince this man to vote for Trump is astonishing. The hatred of women and the entitlement is really strong. I just hope that there aren’t too many of them.

But misogyny has been my main fear. Because, at least online, misogyny is very prominent these days.

Considering Trump will pump weaponry to Bibi the guy is delusional. Trump’s weakness will embolden Putin, Xi and any other authoritarian.

 

[MT15]

Considering Trump will pump weaponry to Bibi the guy is delusional. Trump’s weakness will embolden Putin, Xi and any other authoritarian.

He’s not delusional - at his core. He hates women at his core. The self-delusion is directly caused by that.

 

[bird]

He’s not delusional - at his core. He hates women at his core. The self-delusion is directly caused by that.

Can’t argue that. He also is self-loathing as he supports a party that would lock him back in the closet at best and destroy him at worst.

 

[CoolBrees]

As Patton Oswalt so eloquently stated the night Hilary lost:

"Tonight we learned that America is more misogynistic than it is racist. And America is racist as fork."