Because of this column, I have been blessed with a flood of correspondence (mostly emails) from people who love President Trump. I respond to every email, resulting in a few continuing exchanges by email with many Trump supporters.
Frequently, when replying to emails from those who defend Trump, I ask the following question, which is universally ignored when and if they do reply. My question is, “How do you feel that the man you support is adored by people who you probably consider deplorable—white nationalists, neo-Nazis, alt-right racists, and anti-semites?”
Trump supporters accept Trump in spite of his crudeness, his misogyny, his adulterous past, his associating with people like Jeffrey Epstein, his slandering of our allies and praising of murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin, but they decline to comment on how he elicits support from those Hillary put in his “basket of deplorables.”
I find it interesting that Trump himself, according to multiple reports, refers to his fringe supporters as “the deplorables,” as if he accepts and courts them. But how does that make his non-deplorable supporters feel? They won’t tell me. (Maybe their emails following this column will give me a clue.)
Is it possible that Trump’s non-deplorable supporters secretly like those statements and policies that excite the deplorables?
Could it be that supporting the incumbent president — typically an honorable thing to do — is a socially acceptable way for them to express feelings and beliefs that they wouldn’t otherwise share? To many people. “Make America Great Again” sounds a lot like “Make America White Again.” That is, it seems, what Trump’s opposition to all forms of immigration — legal and illegal — is about. Recently he suspended the granting of work permits to all foreigners for all kinds of jobs, not just for picking our fruits and vegetables.
He expressed it clearly in January 2018 when he said that Norwegians would be more welcome to move to the United States than immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Haiti or African nations. Such language is abhorrent — unless you actually agree with it.
In a previous column, I described how a fellow Realtor supports Donald Trump because his policies — specifically his tax cuts — have benefited her. (She has accepted the spin that it was a “middle-class tax cut,” when those cuts were really just a cover for a vast giveaway to the wealthy.)
I have heard from others who agree with her. Apparently, statements by Trump such as the one above aren’t enough to outweigh favorable opinions of the man based on self-interest. I prefer to think that persons like my Realtor friend overlook rather than approve of Trump’s racist comments.
I don’t believe that anything, including this column, will convince anyone to stop loving Trump. Their biases and support based on self-interest run too deep. We can only hope that what the polls tell us is true, that, despite the mud that will be thrown about Joe Biden — “mob boss of the Deep State” — there’s enough revulsion toward Donald Trump, the person, and enough opposition to his racist attitudes, that he will not succeed in winning for himself another term.
As John Bolton has said, our great country can survive one term of Donald Trump, but I’m worried about its ability to survive a second term.
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Thank you for your support
Some readers have asked how this column has affected my real estate business. A few Trump lovers have said they will never use Golden Real Estate because of the “venom” I spew. Thankfully, others have said they will now definitely use our agents for their real estate needs. Thanks!
Hello Jim,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your Talking Turkey commentaries. Keep it up!
Just a note about the one question. I, too, have asked Trump supporters one question ever since he announced his candidacy. I am still waiting a single response. The question is this:
"Tell me one thing Donald Trump has done in his entire life, that could be described as patriotic?"
Trump has led an extraordinarily public life. Public due to his unquenchable thirst for self-promotion. His own words in print and interviews have ever only served his twin motivations: avarice and ego. He has stated that his donations to politicians and any association with any charitable efforts were strictly done to get something back. "That's the way it works," he said in a Republican debate. "You give something because you expect to get something back."
The most egregious element of comments by Bolton and Kelly and others is that they express surprise at what has been patently obvious to the world all along: Trump is a narcissistic, pathological liar. He is delusional about his own capabilities, and astoundingly juvenile in temperament. No kidding! None of this was hidden.
I get that people were looking for a radical alternative to Washington ineffectiveness. I get that a change was desired. But I will never get how that translated into millions of people voting for someone so monumentally unfit for the job. He had (and has) no vision, no solutions, no substance. Just empty, pandering words that are routinely the polar opposite of his behavior.
Now he's back to promising to save us from the impending Zombie Apocalypse of lawless liberalism, hoping to scare enough voters to supporting him. One can only hope that enough voters have had enough of this empty egomaniac who will go down in history as the low point in American politics. (That is, one can only hope that we never sink lower than this.)
Thank you.
AC Dion
Westminster, CO
First of all, I doubt that you will publish any Trump supporter’s response to your article. You would prefer to keep your articles one sided, just like your CNN cohorts (see below). Your question to Trump supporters that they “don’t want to answer” can only be answered with a question right back at you. How do you feel that Biden is adored by people who you would probably consider deplorable – communists (the CCP loves Biden because he and Obama gave them everything they wanted, sold out our country to them is more like it); terrorists; anti-Christian fanatics; anarchists; alt-left racists; protesters who have spread Covid-19 all over the country then blame it on Republicans; 1984 totalitarian promoters of erasing history and censorship of anything that supports white decency because they don’t want you to believe there is anything decent in white people; celebrities in it for the photo-op who don’t have a rat’s butt’s idea of what is going on in the world; mob rule sympathetic politicians; radical CNN fake news reporters (you sound like one, Mr. “Smith”) who truly believe their twisted opinions are verified facts; revenge seekers and anonymous authors who write hateful books; PhD’s who should evaluate all politicians and not just the ones they don’t like because all politicians are psychopaths, not just the ones they don’t like (and by the way, Trump is the least psychopathic of them all); fake informants authenticated by fake informants; violent criminals who love the idea of dismantling the police; and pedophiles who also love the idea of powerless social workers and sympathetic sex psychologists investigating their crimes? My answer is that I think your deplorables are far, far worse and vastly more attracted to the corrupted Democrat Party than who you would call Trump deplorables. And ALL of your deplorables want to divide then destroy this nation. The whole Democrat Party been taken over by deplorables. How clear does it need to be to your hateful anti-Trump heart that these people do not have your best interests in their hearts, if they have one at all? You will find out if they win. They will throw you and all your values under the bus. I am a former Democrat who was nauseated by the juvenile democrats’ sore losers’ petty reactions to Trump winning the presidency. So I became Unaffiliated. Since then, the Democrat Party has only gotten more nauseating and disgusting. You talk about bullies? Democrats have been the biggest bullies since day one. You talk about psychopaths? Democrats take the cake. So…the decision is between a spineless wimp in a corrupt political party in cahoots with communists and bullies and belies our sitting President every chance they get…and a man who speaks his mind, whether I agree with everything he says or not, I’ve never agreed 100% with anyone, who supports my country’s police and rule of law? I will support Trump, the police and the rule of law and this time I will vote Republican all the way. Don’t fret, I’m not affiliated to the Republicans, they are just the better choice.
ReplyDeleteAnd here is my evaluation of you according to your Rotary Test. 1. You speak the party line so you have a hard time with reality and truth. 2. Your opinion of Trump, again, is the party line. It is biased. 3. Oh hell no! You speak the party line which is to trash and potty mouth your opponent. 4. Don’t flatter yourself that you are beneficial to all, you are only beneficial to the party line. So I’m telling you that the Democrat Party line is as fake as a plastic rose and you are not the purity you think you are.