Tag: Trump supporters

Here’s how Trump weaponizes crackpot ideas to maintain a firm grip on his MAGA base

AlterNet logoIf President Donald Trump is reelected in November, it won’t be because the majority of Americans share his views, but because of his ability to fire up his MAGA base, whip them into a frenzy, address their grievances and get them to the polls in large numbers. Trump, journalist Michael Kruse explains in a Politico article headlined “Trump’s Art of the Seal,” knows and understands his audience — and one of the things that has kept that audience excited is his ability to take fringe ideas, get them discussed in mainstream venues and weaponize them.

Trump has inspired widespread discussion of crackpot conspiracy theories ranging from birtherism (the racist claim that President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of the U.S.) to the CrowdStrike theory — a belief that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It was Trump’s pursuit of the CrowdStrike theory, Kruse explains, that led to him being impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.

During President Barack Obama’s first term, Kruse explains, Trump’s “proto-political operation was essentially a two-man team” consisting of veteran GOP operative Roger Stone and his protégé Sam Nunberg. Continue reading.

Expert on the far right says it’s pointless to tell people Donald Trump is bad. Here’s what we can do instead

AlterNet logoDonald Trump’s impeachment is a rebuke against the global new right and its assault on democracy and the rule of law.

On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives finally voted to impeach Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, including abuse of power and obstructing Congress and the rule of law. There are many possible reasons to impeach Trump, but these relate to his efforts to extort the government of Ukraine into launching a fake investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 Democratic nominee.

Trump now becomes the third American president to have ever been impeached. But he is unique and distinct in one way, as the only president to be impeached for using his public office to interfere in U.S. foreign policy and betray a foreign ally for personal gain. Continue reading

This disturbing psychological analysis of Trump supporters has exposed key 5 traits about them

AlterNet logoThe lightning-fast ascent and political invincibility of Donald Trump has left many experts baffled and wondering, “How did we get here?” Any accurate and sufficient answer to that question must not only focus on Trump himself, but also on his uniquely loyal supporters. Given their extreme devotion and unwavering admiration for their highly unpredictable and often inflammatory leader, some have turned to the field of psychology for scientific explanations based on precise quantitative data and established theoretical frameworks.

Although analyses and studies by psychologists and neuroscientists have provided many thought-provoking explanations for his enduring support, the accounts of different experts often vary greatly, sometimes overlapping and other times conflicting. However insightful these critiques may be, it is apparent that more research and examination is needed to hone in on the exact psychological and social factors underlying this peculiar human behavior.

In a review paper published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew argues that five major psychological phenomena can help explain this exceptional political event.

Continue reading

Is Trump Losing the Working Class?

Many of his core supporters remain loyal despite struggles in manufacturing and agriculture.

EMPLOYMENT AND BUSINESS losses are mounting in key swing states just a year out from President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection bid. And the losses are being felt particularly acutely in the industrial and agricultural sectors – a critical part of the base that helped Trump win the White House in 2016.

But in several of these key swing states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump is not exactly hurting for support from his core constituency. Recent polls in all three states suggest Trump’s job approval – and opposition to House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry – remains strong among the demographic groups and in the geographic areas that supported him the most fervently in 2016.

Despite agricultural upheaval, industrial weakness and a monthslong manufacturing recession – which are being felt particularly acutely in some of 2016’s most pro-Trump counties – the president has yet to see much erosion in support from groups that overwhelmingly backed him three years ago.

View the complete November 8 article by Andrew Soergel on The U.S. News and World Report website here.

How pro-Trump memes mirror the frightening ways Nazi propagandists got their message to the people

[A]fter the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace. . . which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

—Atlantic Charter issued August 14, 1941

AlterNet logoIt was all in good fun  It took place for Trump supporters the weekend of October 14, 2019, at the Trump National Doral Miami.  That was the Trump-owned resort that was to be the site of the G-7 meeting in 2020, until it wasn’t. It had been selected by Trump for the meeting of the G7 because, as Mick Mulvaney, Acting Chief of Staff explained: “Trump still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”

The event was organized by American Priority, a group that pretends to promote free speech.  It was attended by, among others, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump Jr.  In a room adjacent to the main ballroom at the hotel, a video that was produced by an anonymous person operating under the name of: “The GeekzTeam” was shown on a revolving loop. The video includes the logo for the trump 2020 campaign.  According to the New York Times‘s description of the video,  Mr. Trump’s head is superimposed on the body of a man entering the “Church of Fake News. ” As he walks down the aisle he stops, pulls out a gun, and opens fire on parishioners who have the faces of his critics, or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. Among his victims are “Black Lives Matter”, and “Vice News.” He continues walking down the aisle and as he approaches the alter, he is shown striking John McCain in the back of the neck, hitting Rosie O’Donnell in the face, and then stabbing  her in the head. He sets fire to Bernie Sanders’ hair. The video ends with Trump standing on the church altar and admiring the victims of his violent behavior.

View the complete October 27 article by Christopher Brauchli from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.

Trade Mayhem Harms Working Americans Trump Claims To Love

The poorly educated are about to learn just how little Donald Trump loves them. His gratuitous trade mayhem is damaging the global economy.

That means workers in jobs requiring no more than a high school diploma may soon get let go from jobs moving goods. Longshoremen, railroad workers, teamsters, the lumpers who load trailers, warehouse workers and retail clerks are all at risk of being forced into unemployment.

Will these millions of workers grasp that Trump is abusing them to satisfy his whims? Or will they react more like battered spouses who keep returning for more abuse because they cannot see the harsh reality of their situation?

View the complete September 1 article by David Cay Johnston on the National Memo website here.

After El Paso, the ‘send her back’ chant echoes to some as a prelude to murder

Washington Post logoGREENVILLE, N.C. — Weeks before the bullets of El Paso, the words of Greenville echoed through this small city on the North Carolina coastal plain — and across the nation.

Samar Badwan, a Greenville resident, watched that day as 8,000 neighbors and fellow citizens jammed a local basketball arena to serenade the president with a chant of “Send her back,” a response to Trump’s insistence that a Muslim, Somali American congresswoman should “go back” to the land of her birth.

“As we say in the South, he’s stirring the pot,” Badwan remembers thinking. “And that’s a very dangerous game. People are listening.”

View the complete August 13 article by Griff Witte on The Washington Post website here.

Christian minister slams Trump and his supporters for the ‘stench of moral decay’

AlterNet logoDespite having been through two divorces, despite allegations that he had extramarital affairs with an adult film star and a Playboy model and paid both of them hush money to keep quiet, and despite multiple allegations of sexual abuse against him, President Donald Trump continues to be quite popular among far-right Christian fundamentalists such as Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. But those white evangelicals certainly don’t speak for Christianity on the whole.

Trump also has his share of Protestant and Catholic critics, and one of them on the Protestant side is the Rev. Dr. Bill Holmes — a Louisville, Kentucky-based minister and retired physician who has no kind words for Trump’s presidency in a blistering August 12 op-ed for the Courier-Journal.

“Today,” Holmes writes, “the stench of moral decay, especially in politics, is creeping across America.” And one of the most disturbing examples, according to Holmes, is Trump and his supporters’ attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Although Omar has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, she is originally from Somalia — and Trump supporters, at a recent rally in North Carolina, were chanting, “Send her back, send her back” in reference to the Democratic congresswoman.

View the complete August 12 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Fragile patriotism: Right-wing snowflakes are triggered by any criticism of America

AlterNet logoThe term “patriotism” may be associated with strength, but at least in the United States, the people who crow the loudest about loving their country are often the most fragile when it comes to expressing that love in a healthy way.

This ongoing problem of fragile patriotism — a phenomenon particularly prevalent among Trump-flavored American conservatives — contributes to many of the most persistent injustices that plague our country.

As with love in interpersonal relationships, love of one’s country has to encompass the ability to accept criticism. If you love an individual uncritically, you forfeit your capacity for independent thought and leave yourself vulnerable to abusive behavior. Similarly, if you love your country uncritically, you ignore the sins of its past — and make it more likely that they will recur in the future.

View the complete July 14 commentary by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this.’ Some once-loyal farmers begin to doubt Trump.

Washington Post logoORIENT, SOUTH DAKOTA — The sky had finally cleared after weeks of record-setting rain, and now farmer Ray Martinmaas was facing a time crunch.

He was out in his white Ford F-150 Raptor pickup, searching his family’s 15,000 acres for areas dry enough to plant corn in time to mature by fall harvest, passing places where new bodies of ruinous water glittered. He spotted his neighbor Mark Cotton, another farmer, and slowed his truck to talk.

“Still too wet?” Martinmaas asked.

“We’re spinning our wheels,” Cotton replied. “This trade thing is going to kill us.”

View the complete June 21 article by Annie Gowen on The Washington Post website here.