From Slate: Trump Didn’t Believe His Election Lies; Pollster Autopsies Explained Loss

I wouldn’t do justice by merely quoting from the two articles I just read on Slate.com. I urge you to subscribe to Slate Plus, as I do. The first article by William Saletan, published on Slate.com on Feb. 4th is entitled Trump Didn't Believe His Election Lies: His trial can prove it. The 2nd article, also by Saletan, published on Feb. 2nd, is entitled Trump Destroyed Himself: Two reports by his own pollsters show why he should have won but didn't. The blue type in the PDF linked below are hyperlinks, so look for the articles on Slate.com if you want to click on them.

 

What I'd Like Joe Biden to Say in His Inaugural Address

Clearly, job #1 for Joe Biden's inaugural address is to speak to the followers of Donald Trump -- 86% of whom, according to polls, don't trust the 2020 election.

I would like President Biden to acknowledge the patriotism of those followers. Who among us would put their lives on the line if they truly believed what Donald Trump told his followers -- that the election was stolen.  "I stand here today asking you patriots to challenge that belief. Even the leader of your party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, will tell you that the election was honest and that you can believe Donald Trump lost the election. I don't want one more of you to lose your life or go to jail fighting for your country under false pretenses.  I respect your patriotism, and I share your patriotism."

That's the tone I would like to hear from Joe Biden tomorrow after he takes the oath of office. 

Bonus points if our new President says, "I'm not a communist and I'm not a socialist," and gives a definition to those terms which these people will recognize is not what he and his Vice President and cabinet stand for.  "Those lies, on top of the lies about the election, have been used to manipulate you, and that needs to come to an end here and now.  Watch me in the coming weeks and months and you'll see that I'm a president who not only puts America first, but puts it first before himself.  That's the kind of president this country deserves and who 80 million Americans voted for."

The Washington Post Counts Trump’s Lies. Who’s Keeping a Body Count?

A female insurrectionist was shot and killed on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol building. It is indisputable that if President Trump hadn’t urged his followers to storm the Capitol that she would not have died. Four others are now reported to have died during the event, including one Capitol Police officer.

In the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, a woman was killed by an Alt-Right member in a demonstration that was inspired by a president who had emboldened those “deplorables.”

A 17-year-old man with an AR-15 rifle, inspired by Donald Trump, went to Kenosha and killed two people.

Over 1/3 million Americans so far have died from Covid-19, including people who showed up at mass spreader events — campaign rallies — held for no other purpose than to feed president Donald Trump’s ego.

These are only a few — very few — of the many, many people who have died as a direct result of our president’s tweets and rally speeches. Is anyone keeping a body count of the people who have died as a direct result of Donald Trump’s actions and pronouncements?  I hope so.

This week’s insurrection was the direct result of Donald Trump’s speech to the crowd of MAGA types assembled on the Ellipse outside the White House. He could well be indicted for inciting a riot later this month, after Joe Biden takes the White House from him — or from President Pence, if Trump resigns or is expelled by his cabinet pursuant to the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, or by the Senate through impeachment.

The continued espousal of a stolen election by millions of Americans only exists because the President promotes it. If he had conceded after the election, that movement would have evaporated and many lives would have been saved.

I repeat: It is only because of Donald Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen through fraud that there is large-scale distrust in our electoral system and in the 2020 election results.

A lot has been written about how the Capitol Police were ill-prepared for the insurrection, but lesser coverage of members of that force opening the barricades and taking selfies with the Trumpsters. In a previous column, I pointed out that, with 30% of the population being part of Trump’s base, it only makes sense that 30% of law enforcement personnel would be supporters of Trump and believers in his conspiracy theories.

Given that, one should ask whether chiefs of police do what other employers do, which is to study the social media of their employees. If a police officer is a follower, for example, of QAnon, is he or she the right person to protect the Capitol building or any of us from such rioters?

It is primarily through social media that the alt-right and QAnon types become infected and spread that infection to others, so studying a police officer’s social media accounts would quickly reveal if they support insurrectionists — clearly a disqualifying characteristic for law enforcement personnel, don’t you think? I support the idea that anyone employed in law enforcement must reveal their social media accounts when they join such forces, and the internal affairs divisions of those forces should scan those social media accounts to see whether they subscribe to conspiracy theories that support insurrection.

Many Trumpsters followed my column when it was published in the Denver Post and asked to receive my column by email after the election. They kept emailing me after each column, defending the president. After a while, it got so annoying to read their repetitive emails that I chose to block some of their email addresses, but they still included my address in emails to their friends, so I would occasionally see their emails anyway when their friends would “Reply All” to them.

I was surprised and somewhat gratified this week when I discovered the following email from a die-hard Trumpster. If “the tide has turned” against Trump, the following email forwarded by that Trumpster is a good example of it:

President Donald Trump cost the Republican Party dearly during his time in office, culminating in Democrats sweeping the Georgia runoffs to regain control of the Senate.

For the first time since 2008, Democrats control both chambers of Congress along with the White House.

“Trump f----ed the party,” a paid Trump adviser told a Bloomberg reporter.

“He f----ed the party with his conspiracy theories and pushing females and independents away from the party. The bleeding needs to stop. He needs to go.”

Despite all of the recommendations of an RNC “autopsy” following the 2012 election, Trump did the exact opposite during his time in office and left the GOP at square one.

With the Georgia runoffs in the books and Democrats regaining control of the Senate by sweeping both races, the cost of Donald Trump’s presidency to the Republican Party is in full view.

Since Trump took office in 2017, the GOP lost its House majority in the 2018 midterms, saw once reliable red states like Georgia and Arizona become competitive for Democrats, and now the Senate majority is gone too.

Trump’s pursuit of revenge against state election officials by calling the legitimacy of the vote into question and forcing the issue of $2,000 checks on GOP senators contributed to the Democratic sweep.

Will the cabinet and Vice President Mike Pence have the courage — and allegiance to the Constitution — to invoke the 25th Amendment?  Let’s hope so. On the other hand, if the House of Representatives impeaches the president, and the Senate convicts him in a “snap impeachment,” as I have heard is possible, there is the additional advantage that Trump will be disqualified from seeking the presidency in 2024, which will make numerous ambitious Republicans happy, since they won’t have to run against him. That, I think, makes the conviction more possible now than it was last year over the Ukraine episode.

I’m pleased that president-elect Biden joined those who have drawn attention to the disparity in how local and federal law enforcement prepared for the Black Lives Matter protest at the Lincoln Memorial with how the Capitol Police failed to prepare for the Trump demonstrators. Were they afraid that Black protestors would desecrate the monument to Abraham Lincoln, yet not worried that right-wing extremists would try to confront members of Congress voting to ratify Joe Biden’s election?  If there’s any example of systemic racism in America, isn’t that an example?

Lastly, if this was a watershed event for Donald Trump, it should also be a watershed event for Rupert Murdoch and his network, Fox News Channel, that has been nothing less than an echo chamber for Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories that led to this week’s insurrection. Time will tell.

Did Melania Get Her “I Really Don’t Care” Jacket From Donald’s Closet?

   It’s beginning to make sense now. Even Donald Trump’s supporters must recognize by now that he really doesn’t care about anything except himself. 

My headline for this week’s column was going to be, “Does Anyone Not See by Now That Trump Is a Self-Obsessed Criminal and Con Man?”  But then I remembered the jacket Melania wore on her visit to the border. As a former model, it was so out of character for her to wear an  ill-fitting jacket, much less one with a scrawled message on it. The only explanation can be that it was really Trump’s jacket, not hers. Of course, he would never wear it, but how could he resist buying it?  Borrowing it for her trip to the border fit Melania’s passive aggressive nature, which has been to give the middle digit to her husband — much like how she adopted the issue of cyber bullying. 

If you Google it, you’ll see that the jacket is for sale by multiple vendors.  I wonder how well it is selling among the MAGA crowd, since there are a lot of things they must not care about to continue supporting a man, much less a president, like Donald Trump.

“The President Is Missing” is a phrase we heard starting in mid-November as it became clear there was nothing on the president’s mind except overturning the election of Joe Biden. There has been no comment by the president about anything else, including the pandemic and, more recently, the Nashville bombing.

When he said before the election that the only way he could lose the election was if it were stolen, I suspect he believed it — and still does. The fact that he can’t produce any evidence must surely be frustrating for him, but he is mentally incapable of not believing that he really won. This is how mentally disturbed the man is. We can only hope that he won’t take his psychosis to its logical conclusion, which would be to declare martial law and then resist eviction from the White House, kicking and screaming like the child his niece, Mary Trump, has described him as.

Her description of the president is summarized as follows in an article by the CBC: “The president of the United States, in her opinion, struggles to control his impulses; tell the truth; learn new facts; apologize for mistakes; and lives in constant terror of having people perceive his flaws.”

This is the description of a profoundly disturbed individual — someone that his die-hard fans would likely ban from their personal circle, but whom they support because, despite such flaws, he expresses racial and other prejudices which they endorse privately — and, for some, way too publicly.

Those of us who see the man for what he truly is are holding our breath, hoping he doesn’t do more damage to the country between now and January 20th, worried that his personality disorder might compel him to do some pretty destructive things. As the jacket says, he really doesn’t care about what his actions do to the country. It’s all about him.

It’s easy to foresee a 2021 in which Donald Trump faces the music regarding the illegalities committed by himself and his enterprises. The Trump Foundation was already shut down for its illegal activities.

We can expect that the former president will continue to hold rallies on the pretext of being a candidate in 2024, but the funds raised will be used to pay the $400 million-plus in debts that the New York Times has already reported are facing him in the next four years. He has already raised half that amount through his fundraising ostensibly to fund his challenge of the 2020 election.

At his rallies he will label any indictments and convictions and bad press as politically motivated fake news, which will fly long enough for him to collect more funds from his remaining supporters. His political support by other Republicans will slowly go away, as it already started to do during December, when he was unable to get members of Congress to sustain his veto of the National Defense Authorization Act and to change the Covid-19 relief payments to $2,000 per adult.

The defense bill contained one provision that has really bad ramifications for Trump and his family. It contains the provisions of the Corporate Transparency Act which bans shell corporations from hiding their owners, thus laundering money. Trump himself used a shell corporation created for him by Michael Cohen to disguise the hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, and he has used shell corporations in his businesses too. The technique is also used by foreign actors to launder money.

Please see my blog post from this past Monday at www.JimSmithBlog.com for a longer explanation about this law, excerpted from Heather Cox Richardson’s email newsletter.

    Above I mentioned the Nashville bombing. You probably heard on the news that a girlfriend of the bomber had warned police in 2019 that he was making bombs in his RV. The police went to his house but were refused permission to inspect his home and RV. Because he had no history of criminality, they were also unable to obtain (or perhaps didn’t seek) a warrant to do so.

    This story reflects something that has always bothered me in the discussion about background checks for gun purchases. So often, the people who commit heinous crimes such as in Nashville, or the bombing in Oklahoma City, or the killing of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, are people with no prior criminal record. 

Of the 300 million firearms in civilian hands in America, between 5 and 10 million are AR-15s, the kind used to kill the children at Sandy Hook elementary school. Presumably those owners passed background checks, but let’s say that a mere 1% of them are mentally unstable and could be triggered (excuse the word) by some personal or other event to commiet a heinous mass casualty event with their firearm. That computes to between 50,000 and 100,000 AR-15s in the hands of future mass murderers.

Too extreme a thought? Okay, let’s say that one-tenth of 1% of those AR15s are in the hands of potential domestic terrorists or mass murderers. That’s still 5 to 10 thousand AR15s that someday will make their owner “famous.”

 

Cute video worth watching: "The 12 Stains of Trump's Mess"

 https://youtu.be/G6h8pJCNhzE

As Trump's Path to Election Success Vaporizes, His More Extreme Supporters Get More Desparate and Violent

The following three paragraphs from Heather Cox's Richardson's overnight newsletter hint and the desparation and violence we can expect between now and January 20th:

The lies about the election spread by Trump and his loyalists are radicalizing Republican true believers, according to security officials and terrorism researchers. They worry that fringe conspiracy theories are going mainstream. Polls suggest that 77% of Trump supporters believe that Biden stole the election—although there is no evidence of fraud—and officials worry those true believers are turning to violence. 

Elizabeth Neumann, who resigned from her job as Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy at the Department of Homeland Security in April out of concerns that Trump was exacerbating right-wing violence, noted that “the conservative infotainment sector makes money off… outrage.” Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who was a senior adviser in the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council, agreed with others that Trump is promoting radicalism by spreading conspiracies and disinformation. "Leadership matters," she said. "It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization. And it will really help when that is no longer the case."

In Houston, Texas, today [Tuesday, Dec. 15], police arrested a former police department captain for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in a misguided attempt to foil a massive voter fraud scheme. Sixty-three-year-old Mark Anthony Aguirre claimed to be part of a citizens’ group investigating voter fraud. Believing his victim was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck, Aguirre rammed the truck with his SUV and held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee in the man’s back until police came. Upon inspection, it turned out the truck was full of air conditioning parts. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, said “His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened…. [W]e are lucky no one was killed.”

Youth Vote Was Unprecedented -- and Decisive in 2020

Reader Ralph Taylor sent an email to me this week with the following statistics and information, which is worth sharing widely.  Thanks, Ralph!

Among Colorado voters ages 18-34, 70% of those registered voted. They made up 27% of the total vote in the state and broke two to one for the Joe Biden & Kamala Harris ticket. 

• Think about that for a second. The youngest possible voters went overwhelmingly for the oldest candidate ever to run for President. What "generation gap"? 

According to the report, these voters are not driven by party affiliations or candidates; they vote by issues. Maybe, some of Biden's success came from moving toward the same issues as Bernie Sanders: income disparity, health care, racial justice, gender equity, college costs, etc. 

• Of course, it helped Biden that Trump dismissed as a hoax and made so many obviously false promises about the pandemic that has so disrupted young people's lives. Perhaps, being out of work and out  of school kept bringing it home.  

Also, according to the report, the strongest indicator of future voting is past voting. It becomes a habit; we can expect high youth turnouts to come. . 

With this age group becoming an ever-larger fraction of the electorate -- and now VOTING -- this development has obvious implication for future politics. The party who captures youth issues will grow in power and a party who fights against them will lose power. 

It is, I think, a bad sign for Trumpism. His brand of racism and scapegoating seems doomed. And maybe for the Evangelical Right, with its emphasis on gender norms that youths abhor. 

Click here for an article from theguardian.com which covers this topic in greater detail.

Joe Biden Is Wrong: Trump’s Refusal to Concede Befits His Legacy

   We all remember 2016, when Donald Trump said he would only accept the election results if he won. So it is no surprise that he won’t accept the election results now that he has lost.

Never mind that it defies the constitution and threatens national security. Trump has provided adequate evidence that he doesn’t care about either.  He only cares about himself and his fragile ego.

My July 2nd “Talking Turkey” reported on Dr. Vincent Greenwood’s psychiatric analysis of the president as meeting most of the 20 criteria of a psychopath. Refusal to accept loss is not one of them, but it is certainly consistent with them. Reviewing those 20 criteria now makes them ring truer than ever. Only two or three don’t apply:

1. Glibness/superficial charm

2. Egocentricity/grandiose sense of self-worth

3. Proneness to boredom/low frustration tolerance

4. Pathological lying and deception/gaslighting

5. Conning/lack of sincerity

6. Lack of remorse or guilt

7. Shallow affect

8. Callous/lack of empathy

9. Parasitic lifestyle

10. Poor behavioral controls

11. Promiscuous sexual behavior

12. Early behavioral problems

13. Lack of realistic long-term goals

14. Impulsivity

15. Irresponsibility

16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

17. Many short-term marital relationships

18. Juvenile delinquency

19. Revocation of conditional release

20. Criminal versatility

News Flash: Trump’s a Loser

Yes, Donald Trump is now a loser, whether he accepts it or not. He is even on record saying that he’s a bad loser.

A Nov. 7 Fast Company column by Joe Berkowitz has the simple headline, “Donald Trump is a Loser,” In it, he wrote that Trump has in fact been a loser in many ways (e.g. getting Mexico to pay for his wall) and lists 14 things we will lose with his departure:

1)  The “fascist cruelty of Stephen Miller.”

2)  Acceptance of white supremacy, “making racists feel happy, comfortable and validated.”

3)  Loss of international esteem.

4)  Denial of climate change.

5)  Conversations about building “the wall.”

6)  The “top-down politicization of the pandemic.”

7)  A Trump-dominated news cycle.

8)  Distrust of White House announcements, which typically focus on Trump’s inherent greatness.

9)  Spite “as the prevalent motivating force,” aimed at “making liberals cry again.”

10)  Loyalty to the president as the primary employment qualification.

11)  The concept of “alternative facts”

12)  The idea that the media is the opposition party and “enemy of the people.”

13)  The president as a negative role model for children.

14)  The president’s sense of infallibility, that he can do no wrong.

But this is such a limited list, isn’t it? I can think of several more things I look forward to losing.

1)  “Shooting from the hip” without thinking and without consultation with advisors. Example: Middle-of-the-night tweeting in general, but specifically announcing troop withdrawal from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies.

2)  The president thinking he knows it all — more than the generals, more than epidemiologists, more than climate scientists or scientists in general.

3)  The president making policy decisions based solely on the desire to reverse the policy of his predecessor, regardless of whether the policy was a good one.

4)  A president who is a psychopath, unable to express compassion, such as upon the death of Sen. John McCain, calling him a “loser.”

 

I Can’t Get Over the Fact that Many People Voted for Trump Based on Lies

   As I watched the Florida returns on Tuesday evening, I was struck by the statement that the majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade voted for Trump because they had been convinced that Biden was a stalking horse for communism, from which they had fled in Cuba.

That is such a blatant lie, which Trump has been happy to promote in his rallies, and those Cuban-Americans actually believed him.  It they and other Floridians had known they were being duped, it’s possible the state would have gone to Biden, and the election would have been over more quickly.

And that’s just one of the innumerable lies which were utilized by the Trump campaign to draw voters away from the Biden/Harris ticket. How many voters, for example, believed the QAnon line that Democratic leaders like Clinton and Pelosi were part of a Satan-worshipping cult that engaged in pedophilia and drank babies’ blood?

In such a close election, any one lie that is believed by lots of people can make a difference, and the Trump campaign convinced millions of followers of so many lies that one wonders how poorly the president would have done without engaging in any of those lies and if the Russians and other hackers hadn’t spread multiple lies in 2016 as well as this year.

It’s time to realize that our country was suckered in by one of the greatest con men of all times. If you haven’t watched Frontline’s program, “The Choice 2020: Trump vs. Biden,” you can view it free online.  His niece, Mary Trump, describes him as a con artist on that program and in her best selling book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

For that matter, the same picture of Trump was painted by Frontline in their program four years ago, “The Choice 2016: Trump vs. Clinton” (also available to view free online), but it wasn’t enough to counter the big con that won Trump the presidency.

The biggest con, of course, still being played by Trump, is that he’s a successful businessman and great deal maker. It’s simply not true. His business life it littered with failures, including multiple bankruptcies. Mark Burnett can be credited (or blamed) with creating the false mystique about Donald Trump, who was, in fact, rescued from failure by “The Apprentice.”

Now that the campaign is over, it’s useful and appropriate, I believe, to take stock of what we have all witnessed ever since Donald Trump and Melania came down that gold escalator in June 2015. (Did you know that those people in the Trump Tower atrium were in fact extras paid $50 each to be there and cheer him on?)

There are plenty of books written by persons in a position to know which can educate Americans about the big con. The “bible” would have to be the book published earlier this year by the Fact Checker staff of The Washington Post: Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies.

Speaking of The Washington Post, I’d like to acknowledge how all the mainstream media have stayed true to their professional standards throughout these years of being ridiculed and called “the enemy of the people.”

One book which really portrays that experience is Jonathan Karl’s best seller, Front Row at the Trump Show.  Karl has known and covered Trump longer than any other White House correspondent, including back when he was a rising real estate developer in New York City. As a journalist myself, I enjoyed his perspective, including his criticism of some other correspondents who strayed, but rarely, from journalistic standards and ethics. If you are intrigued by the role of journalists, I heartily recommend Karl’s book.

Another writer who I recommend is Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, who writes a nightly newsletter called “Letters from an American.” Visit https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

 

By Supporting Donald Trump, You Indicate That You Believe the Following…

You believe character is not all that important in the President of the United States, although you thought it was super important with previous presidents.

You believe that Supreme Court justices should be “originalists.” Originalists believe the constitution should be interpreted based on the founding fathers’ original intent. If so, that means you support slavery and oppose all kinds of rights for women.

You believe that the 2nd Amendment was written not only to allow the arming of state militias but to allow anyone to purchase unlimited military grade weapons so they can take up arms against the state if, in their own mind, they consider the current elected government tyrannical.

You don’t allow yourself to believe there is systemic racism in America, dismissing any and all evidence of it.  You accept Trump's claim that he is "the least racist person" ever and has done more for African-Americans than any president, including Abraham Lincoln.

You believe it is okay for the Commander in Chief to disparage war heroes, to call Sen. John McCain a "loser," and to order the White House flag raised after it had been lowered to half staff upon the Senator’s death.  You don't believe that he refused to visit a WWI cemetery in France because it was "filled with losers and suckers," even though a Fox News reporter verified that statement. 

   You believe that it was okay for the President to tell Americans that Covid-19 was no more virulent than the flu, even after he was on tape telling Bob Woodward that it was five times more deadly.

   You accept that the free press is the “enemy of the people,” and that opposition to the president is treasonous, resulting in cases of police intentionally targeting reporters covering demonstrations with rubber bullets and Mace.

You believe the president’s Twitter feed, Fox News and radio talk shows are all you need to be fully informed.

You don’t believe any of the criticism of Donald Trump written or spoken by persons who worked closely with him, including the man he hired to write The Art of the Deal, or his longest-serving national security advisor, John Bolton. You think they’re all lying, and just out to make money telling lies.

You believe immigrants have no value to America and are taking jobs from Americans who truly want to pick your vegetables and replace your roofs. You think immigrants don’t pay taxes and are living off your money.

You agree that “dreamers” who have lived here since infancy and known only America should be deported to their parent’s country. You think it’s just fine to separate children from their immigrant parents and not track their location for eventual reunification.

You believe that black, Hispanic and Muslin members of Congress who are American citizens elected by their districts should be deported to the countries of their parents or ancestors.

You supported the banning of travel from majority Muslim countries even though Trump exempted Saudi Arabia, which was the home country of the 9/11 terrorists.  You dismiss the fact that Saudi Arabia is the one Muslim country where Trump has financial interests. 

You believe that mere accusation of wrongdoing, without hearing or trial, by the president is all that is required to “lock up” political opponents. Due process doesn’t apply to them. (Does this sound like authoritarianism yet?)

You think it’s okay for the President to insult our allies for almost anything but not criticize, much less accuse, Vladimir Putin of poisoning his political opponents, It’s also okay to withhold criticism of (and sell arms to) the Saudi Crown Prince, who ordered the killing and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist he didn’t like.

You believe that climate change is a hoax, that we don’t need to worry about rising sea levels or more severe hurricanes and forest fires. You don’t ask why the Pentagon declared climate change a national security issue.

You believe that we need to keep subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and stop subsidizing clean energy.

You believe we don’t need environment protections. It’s okay to let our air and water be polluted by industry for profit. You support expanded oil drilling on public lands even though we are already self-sufficient in oil production. 

You believe, without evidence, that there is rampant killing at birth of full-term babies.

You believe that Joe Biden is a stalking horse for Communists who hate America and want to make the United States into a dictatorship like Venezuela. You don’t ask why anyone would want to destroy their own country. (I’m beginning to think you do!)

You believe the impeachment of the president was without any merit. Those hours of testimony about Ukraine were all made up by traitorous members of the Deep State conspiracy to undo the 2016 election.

You believe the Mueller probe found no involvement by Russia to assist the Trump campaign and that there was no obstruction of justice by the president. Ordering members of his administration to ignore subpoenas by Congress isn’t obstruction of Congress.

You believe that Donald Trump was a successful businessman who became a multi-billionaire through his amazing business acumen and high ethics. And that all the monies due to people who worked for him have been paid. It's "fake news" that he hired undocumented workers for his buildings and golf courses.

You believe that bullying is "presidential" and suitable for international relations.

You think it's just fine for the president to repeat all kinds of conspiracy theories which serve his interest, without making any effort to verify them.  (And you're happy to retweet or share them without verification too!) 

You believe that Donald Trump is a "stable genius" and that he knows more than the generals, more than CDC experts, more than anyone.  In fact, you believe he was chosen by God to lead the United States at this time.

You believe that Trump inherited an economy in shambles, and don't accept that Obama, who took over during an economic crisis rescued the economy and turned over a vibrant economy that did not need any stimulus.

In that regard, you believe that the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 was a "middle class tax cut" despite documentation that over 80% of its benefits went to the ultra-rich.  You believe that giving tax cuts to multi-billionaires creates jobs!  (You sure are gullible!)

And above all else, he makes all the right decisions for the health and well-being of all Americans for the betterment of our future.

It doesn't bother you that the president is unable to admit any mistakes, but will always double down on assertions known to be false.  

Yes, if you support Trump for re-election, you believe all kinds of stupid shit!  What does this say about you?  Are you telling your children and grandchildren how they should grow up to be like you -- or, worse, to be like your idol, Donald Trump?  God save America.