Millions of Democrats and independents view Trump’s four years in office as a disaster but for supporters it is his biggest asset
Wearing a shirt festooned with countless images of Donald Trump, Leverne Martin was looking cheerful for a man who had set off from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9pm and driven through the night, arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, at 5.30am. When did he intend to sleep?
“As soon as President Trump is back in the White House,” the 55-year-old handyman replied without missing a beat. “If we don’t get him back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he belongs, we’re in a mess, man. That’s why I’m voting for President Trump. That’s why I drove nine hours.”
On a grey, rainy day, Martin was near the head of a long and winding queue outside a cavernous conference centre overlooking the Mississippi River. Like so many fans in so many towns and cities over nearly a decade, an overwhelmingly white crowd had come to cheer on Trump, elected US president in 2016, beaten by Joe Biden in 2020 and clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.
these people are so clueless
They are not clueless, they want to be lawless like Trump. They think we’ve created a fragile and disfunctional society by trying to make things fair, and these leftist ideologies are what’s keeping them back from living the American dream.
They feel oppressed when they can’t slap a womans ass in public, or just feeling out of place wherever they go because they want to throw trash on the ground, drive big trucks and buy as much toilet paper as they want. They think if Trump was elected, they would become the people who decide what’s ok and not ok in society. Literally a “incel beta uprising” mentality.
They deserve everything that’s going to happen to them, the only problem is it’s going to happen to the rest of us too.
Some are clueless and some are malicious.
For the clueless ones, there’s a sunk cost fallacy in effect. Similar to how a person who falls for a Nigerian prince scam will keep sending money, these people will keep supporting Trump (and sending money). After all, stopping now would admit that they were scammed for so long. Better (in their mind) to send another campaign contribution because this will DEFINITELY be the one that makes Trump turn their lives around.
For the malicious, they clearly see who Trump is and they like it. They want to be able to fly their Nazi flags while calling black people the N word and beating up anyone who is LGBTQ. They want women to be subjugated to men and for anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Christian male to be a second class citizen (or worse). When Trump threatens the lives of people, the malicious folks cheer him on because that’s how they want society to function - with them on top and everyone else kissing their toes in the hopes that it’ll help avoid a kick to the face.