Everyone voting for Trump isn't a believer in white nationalism, isn't a racist, and certainly not a violence prone sadist who thinks it's a good idea to separate migrant children from their parents and lock them in cages let alone put alligators in the Rio Grande or shoot those attempting to cross it in the legs.
They aren't in what Hillary Clinton, much to her detriment, called the "basket of deplorables" (a phrase that has it's own Wikipedia entry).
"Basket of deplorables" is a phrase from a 2016 US presidential election campaign speech delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event. She used the phrase to describe "half" of the supporters of her opponent, Republicannominee Donald Trump, saying they're "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic".[1] The next day, she expressed regret for "saying half", while insisting that Trump had deplorably amplified "hateful views and voices".[2]
The Trump campaign repeatedly used the phrase against Clinton during and after the 2016 presidential election. Many Trump supporters adopted the "deplorable" moniker for themselves in reappropriation. Some journalists and political analysts questioned whether this speech played a role in the election's outcome. In her 2017 book What Happened, Clinton herself said that her comments on the "basket of deplorables" were a factor in her electoral loss.[3]
Here's some of what I think they believe.
First and foremost they believe that a Trump presidency will be good for them, their families, and for the country. Second, they believe that Kalama Harris will not be good for them, their families, and for the country. Many of them say that they just don't trust Kamala Harris but they are unable to explain why.
When confronted with all the reasons not to vote for Trump they either counter by saying this is fake news or dismissing these reasons by saying that his various strengths as a leader outweigh his shortcomings. They don't think children are being sent to school where, against their parents will, they will have their gender changed. They don't think Kamala Harris will turn the country into a communist or Marxist state.
I ask myself whether they even listen to some of what Trump has been saying and do they believe him? For example:
Trump falsely claimed that there are “over 13,000 illegal alien convicted murderers roaming free in our country … that were released from jail from all over the world,” particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Illegal immigrants, he said, “have equipment that our military doesn’t have” and are “taking over apartment buildings” in Colorado. It’s all part of a “mass migrant invasion of murderers and child predators and gang members, terrorists, drug dealers and thugs.” He told the audience that if “this crazy, incompetent” Harris wins, “this same group is going to meet in Caracas, Venezuela, because it’ll be much safer than your particular state.” (From Dana Milbank in The Washington Post )
Are they aware of the following and do they approve of it?
Mark Milley, the retired U.S. Army general and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, worries that Donald Trump will order a military trial against him if re-elected, according to a new book.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward reveals in his new book, "War," that Milley recently “warned former colleagues that Trump intends to recall and then court martial retired senior officers who have criticized him as part of a wide-ranging revenge campaign he has pledged to carry out in a possible second term as president, according to excerpts published by The Guardian.
I am convinced that most of these voters would change their minds if they opened them, their minds that is, to the truth about who Donald Trump is and to how he plans to govern if he's elected again. They need to learn about what Project 2025 says (Snopes has a good piece about it here) and ask themselves whether if Trump manages to implement half of it the following question: is this the kind of country they want to live in?
He is a self-centered liar (he lied 40 times yesterday) incapable of empathy who enjoys inflicting pain on those who challenge him and who believes the world should bend to his needs whether they are at the most basic sexual level to his need to be seen as the real life incarnation of of Rambo or Superman. That Trump actually seeing himself as someone who both is so sexually attractive that women should be grateful for his grabbing them by the private parts to someone who thinks he's a manly man because he can get in a professional wrestling ring and shave Vince McMahanon's head should preclude him from ever being president.
Trump shared this on Truth Social:
This image includes Elon Musk, the pro-Trump megabillionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who owns X (formerly Twitter), as the part-human/part-robot Cyborg, and entrepreneur, investor and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as the Flash. Former U.S. congressional representative Tulsi Gabbard is suited up as Wonder Woman, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently dropped his independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump, seems to be Aquaman.
Nobody over the age of 12 who has such fantasies should be president. Yet there are those who dismiss this aspect of him and it doesn't bother them that if elected he holds the nuclear codes and he'd be the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world which he's said he might use to go after his domestic enemies. See: Donald Trump threatens to imprison Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and others. Experts are worried. USA Today
(Addition) My life partner, in proofreading this for me, just said with dismay and incredulity "who would even think of trying to inprison their political enemies?" adding "this is not who we are."
People who say they don't think Kamala Harris has the experience or strength to be president discount the incontrovertible facts about her career going from an assistant prosecutor in the San Francisco DA's office to being elected as District Attorney of San Francisco to being elected as Attorney General of California to being elected as a Calfornia Senator to being Vice President.
They may not have heard that she said in her "60 Minutes" that she's been a gun owner since she was a senator. (See USA Today article.)
Vice President Kamala Harris revealed that she owns a Glock gun during the Democratic ticket's interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" Monday night.
Harris told Bill Whitaker that she has fired the gun at a gun range and has had it for "quite some time."
“I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” Harris said at the time. An aide at the time said Harris purchased a handgun years before her statement and that it was locked up.
I wonder if this part of her interview was the final straw it leading to him say CBS should lose its license over the "60 MInutes" interview (Reference) because showed her as a woman not afraid to own and learn to shoot the a Glock, the handgun carried by most police officers (reference).
There's one thing you can be sure of. It's that Kamala Harris won't be using AI (as I did) to make an image of herself firing a pistol. She doesn't have a psychological need to do this and she wouldn't insult voters by portraying herself this way.
Update:
Today Trump spread lies about Aurora, Colorado, the town where there was a lie he supported about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, while he was in Aurora.
When he was in Wisconsin over the weekend in Prairie du Chien he said “If Kamala is reelected, your town, and every town just like it, all across Wisconsin and all across our country — the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter — will be transformed into a third-world hellhole.” He also said “Today I make you this promise: I will liberate Wisconsin and our entire nation from this mass migration invasion of murderers, child predators, drug dealers, gang members and thugs. It’ll be liberated,” Trump said before a crowd of thousands at a rally in Juneau, Wis., over the weekend.
The tragedy is that people in these Wisconsin towns, and in towns across the country, believe these lies. If they opened their eyes and looked around they would be hallucinating if they saw what he says is happening in their towns.
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