How Did You Feel When a Friend, Partner, Employer/Employee Lied to You?

  When someone has lied to you, you probably started to question your relationship and whether they are lying to you again, right?

When a spouse cheated on you, were you able to forgive and forget? Or did it cause you to question when he or she was “working late” or going on a business trip without you?

When an employee or employer lied to you, did you “let it slide,” or did you begin to question future communications with him/her?

What’s most surprising about Trump supporters is that they know he is a habitual liar, yet they “let it slide” again and again and fall in line with his next set of lies. Here are some of the lies that surely they know were lies:

>  He said he didn’t have sex with porn star Stormy Daniels, but Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to paying for her silence and went to prison for it.

>  He excused his Access Hollywood  genital grabbing language as “locker room talk,” then claimed it wasn’t his voice.

>  He described the Jan. 6 insurrection as a “love fest.” I think we know better.

>  It rained on his inauguration, but he claimed the sun came out when he spoke. He claimed his inaugural crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s despite photos proving otherwise.

>  He said that Covid-19 was a Chinese hoax, intended to help the Democrats.

>  He accidentally said that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, but because he can’t ever admit he was wrong, he not only lied about it with a Sharpie, but he pressured government agencies to confirm his lie.

>  He said the head of the Boy Scouts called him to say his political speech at the 2017 Jamboree was “the greatest speech ever made to them,” but a Scouts spokesman said no such call had been made — Scouts honor!

A Trumper might still believe one or two of that short list of Trump’s lies, but my own experience as a human being is that it only takes one lie from someone to make me question everything that person says in the future. I suspect that’s true for Trumpers — except when it comes to Donald Trump.

That’s very cult-like. “Cult-45.”

So, how do you explain that behavior by Trump supporters, if not by saying it’s a cult?

I think it’s largely racial. Trump has been successful by playing on voter’s racial fears — fears triggered by the U.S. Census reporting that we’re approaching a time when white Americans will be in the minority. He compounded that by claiming that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, or worse — a claim that no amount of factchecking would fix, since it played to what his base wanted to believe.

In the 2020 election, Trump pleaded with suburban women that they should love him, because Democrats would end single-family zoning, bringing inner city crime to the suburbs. Again, the race card. But suburban women didn’t buy it in enough numbers to carry the day for Trump in 2020.

So now we come to the Big Lie — that the election which Biden won resoundingly was “stolen” through fraud. Again, the truth doesn’t matter to Trump supporters. Lesson number one from Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and other autocrats: repeat a lie often enough and it will be taken as truth.

Trump supporters ultimately should realize they’ve been conned by Trump except for one big thing: he speaks to their fears. They are less wedded to Trump himself than to his philosophy. Tucker Carlson is banking on that.

The one lie which strikes closest to home for me as a journalist, and now a columnist, is that the mainstream media are puppets of the liberal left. I don’t expect any Trumper reading this to be convinced otherwise, and that’s the problem — how to change minds.

The Trump GOP thrives on playing to the fears of its base, but now it’s filling us non-Trumpers with fear that they could succeed, that they could take control of the Congress in 2022 and the White House again in 2024.

 

 

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."

It’s Useful to Know the Arguments Trump Supporters Make About Their Man

Researching and writing this column has given me an insight which many readers don’t have into what Trump supporters believe to be true about their candidate and what they are being told about Joe Biden. In addition to sampling Fox News (the primary diet of Trump supporters), I get lengthy emails from readers who are under the president’s spell — and who will remain under his spell no matter what the president says or does between now and the election on Nov. 3rd.

I have identified three principal themes to the Trump campaign strategy — and those themes will continue to work for his unquestioning and sheltered “base.” These themes are reinforced and given legitimacy by the base’s sources of information and opinion — the president’s tweets, Trump-promoting media like Fox News Channel, and emailed memes and narratives which are forwarded unquestioned by millions of Trump followers.  Here are some of them:

The three themes I have identified are: First, that Donald Trump, the “very stable genius,” has kept his campaign promises, revived a stalled economy inherited from Obama, and has been wrongly attacked (and spied upon illegally) from even before he took office. Second, Joe Biden is senile, can’t put two sentences together, and will be a puppet to supporters who are socialists/communists/Marxists (who “hate” America). Third, the country is under attack from out-of-control looters and rioters in Democratically-controlled cities. This third theme is reinforced daily by Fox News, which consistently focuses on this violence and especially on the injuries sustained by police officers. Anyone watching their reports would think this violence is far more widespread than it is and would naturally applaud Trump for sending unidentified federal officers in unmarked vehicles to, in effect, kidnap demonstrators, who they immediately release because they can’t charge them with a federal crime.

Regarding theme #1, I have a few observations. How anyone can buy that Trump is a genius, on a par with Einstein, is beyond reasoning. He says he know more than the generals, more than medical experts, more than experts in any field. He doesn't need or respect scientists on such topic as climate change. Economists have verified that Trump inherited a healthy economy from Obama and that his Tax Cut and Jobs Act (what jobs?) was unnecessary to stimulate the economy and only enriched the wealthy.  Economist Elliot Eisenberg told me, "The Trump years since he took over from Obama were roughly the same at 2.1% growth.  The only difference is that in 2018, growth was better due to the tax cut. Now Trump did some deregulation and that probably helped boost growth but not that much.  Trump’s policies helped a bit at the margin but nothing big."  

Regarding "Obamagate" (the "spying" by the FBI on the Trump campaign), it was prompted by the routine taping of Russians' phone calls, and given their phone calls intercepted with the Trump campaign, of course the FBI should have followed that lead.  If Obama really wanted to put his finger on the scale during the 2016 election, he wouldn't have kept that intelligence secret. Given that Trump won the election, he probably regrets that he kept that intelligence private. 

To counter theme #2, I would like Joe Biden to request a town hall program on Fox News, and speak out if he is denied such an opportunity.  Pete Buttigieg was given that opportunity by Fox and did an excellent job of countering whatever negative narratives viewers may have had about him.  How could Fox justify denying the same opportunity to Biden? Since theme #2 is that Biden is senile and “doesn’t know he’s alive” according to Trump, a town hall meeting would be a perfect opportunity — better than a debate with Trump — to counter that narrative.

And then, of course, there are the conspiracy theories propagated online and in Trump’s tweets, which are too numerous to mention here. Click on that link. 

Although Trump supporters aren’t inclined to do so, I recommend Googling each outrageous claim sent to you, or go directly to www.Snopes.com to get the background and truth.  Whether it’s “too good to be true” or “too bad to be true,” it probably is not true.  

Consider, for example, the above meme about Bill deBlasio. Did he change his name from Warren Wilhelm, Jr.?  From Snopes I learned that, yes, he did, and for good reasons. His nickname was Will, and when his mother divorced his abusive father, she and he took her maiden name. My dad, born Abbott O’Brion, and his mother did the same after she divorced my grandfather, taking her maiden name of Smith. 

 

Why Are Trump Supporters So Unwavering? They Have Given Me Some Answers.

Last week’s column generated a lot of emails and phone calls — mostly from readers thanking me for my “courage” and speaking out about what one reader called our “Moron-in-Chief.”  But it also drew the ire of many readers who were offended by the psychological analysis I presented of Trump supporters.

Mind you, it was not my analysis. I was publishing what psychologists near and far have written about Trump and some of his supporters. It’s a fascinating area of academic study these days.

I really appreciated (and responded to) all the emails I received, because they gave me additional insight into this phenomenon we know as Donald J. Trump.

It reminded me of my days as a bicycle activist in New York City, organizing a demonstration to create bike lanes on the 59th Street Bridge. It was so satisfying to see demonstrators on TV parroting the talking points which I had given them prior to the event. Donald Trump and his tribe at Fox News would be similarly gratified to see the president’s fans parroting a kaleidoscope of mistruths which are laid out for them. Some of them were new to me. Obviously I need to watch more of Fox News, especially the evening opinion broadcasts. 

By the way, have you noticed that what Trump calls the “lame-stream media” — NBC, ABC and CBS — don’t have any opinion shows during the evening? While Fox News Channel fills its prime time with pro-Trump, anti-Democratic rabble-rousers, the broadcast channels have nothing but entertainment programs — sitcoms, police shows, reality shows, and the like. There is virtually no opinion programing at any time of any day. All the president has to attack are the straight news reports of the evening news program and the Sunday programs which include guests with their opinions for and against the president.

But I digress. Back to the negative emails I received. More than one described Joe Biden as a “fantasizing senile plagiarist,” a picture being painted by Fox News. A woman I’ll call “Mary” was my favorite, diagnosing Trump with Aspergers Syndrome  (is Trump a savant?) with no mention of narcissism. She compared Trump to Einstein, saying “you will notice that geniuses generally are socially challenged and have unusual behaviors. Trump definitely is challenged and has unusual behaviors.”

She and I had begun to have a conversation via email, but she went silent after I wrote the following:

“So you believe that Trump is a genius – a stable genius, as he says?  This genius said yesterday that we should look into injection of disinfectants! He was touting hydroxychloroquine, so much that it was tried on veterans in VA hospitals. The results, reported today? Nine percent of veterans who were given standard treatment died, but 28% of those who got standard treatment plus hydroxychloroquine died. Because of his promotion of the drug, Trump actually caused the death of many veterans. And today his own FDA came out opposing the drug because of its failure to help and proven causing of death!

“This stable genius promotes coal, while the power industry itself is closing coal plants left and right in favor of cleaner, cheaper natural gas, wind and solar. You know the president only ‘digs coal’ for the votes it gets him in the Midwest.  He pulled us out of the Paris climate accord, making us the only nation in the world not to commit to reducing greenhouse gases. He ordered the EPA to remove the phrase ‘climate change’ from its website and all documents. This is a genius?  Geniuses [like Einstein] believe in the value of science.  If he were smart instead of narcissistic, he would leave the daily briefings to the scientists instead of using them to get screen time and make statements that appeal to his base and then require walking-back by the scientists at the very same briefings! This man is a walking disaster.  No I don’t ‘hate’ him, I see him for what he is.  And it’s scary for this country and this planet.”

If you’d like to write me, too, my email address is jimsmith@ecentral.com. I answer every email.

Many thanks for the additional donations received since last week’s column to help pay for this ad. The donation site is www.FundTalkingTurkey.com.

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