Trump Rallies & Interviews Catch-All | Trump - “just stop talking about that”

[Carolina Fever]

BTW, Trump did not “build” the dam (a dike) at Lake Okeechobee. The dike has been there about 100 years or more and the Army Corps of Engineers has been trying to maintain/improve/repair it for some time. Trump’s administration requested a lot less than Florida asked for to complete the most recent project and Trump went down to take credit for the project in 2019, but it was well underway before he was POTUS and scheduled to be completed after he left office and his administration did not fully fund the project.

The mixing of the sand and water? I think he's talking about building sand castles.

 

[LeoBloom]

Wait, Trump said, regarding January 6, the others had guns? The others were the police protecting Congress!!

What in the world. Trump’s complaining about the insurrectionists not being armed like the police? My gosh, the Dems need to blast this everywhere. Show footage of January 6 and then Trump’s words.

 

[rodoheel]

It's not so much about intelligence. It's more about racism, bigotry and pure greed when it comes to Trump supporters.

It is about intelligence in a way - a lack of emotional intelligence. Also the biggest growing divide among voters is level of education; those with college or more advanced degrees heavily favor Dems, and those without heavily favor Republicans.

 

[hedge]

I think it is counter-productive to assume or insist that everyone who disagrees with you politically is just stupid or mislead.

I've got family members who I know are going to vote for Trump, but other than that they are basically "normal." But I've got a couple of friends, including randman, who were solidly liberal but then just went off the rails. Granted, it happened to randman going on 40 years ago but he almost overnight became basically what hardcore Maga people are today. More concerning is another friend who is definitely plenty smart, good family, very comfortable financially, etc., and she too went completely off the rails. Totally antivax, pro Trump (in fact her biggest complaint on Trump is the role he played in greenlighting the covid vaccine) plus several other pet conspiracy theories (something to do with 5G I think). It's sad when a friend just snaps like that...

 

[circlesky88]

Wait, Trump said, regarding January 6, the others had guns? The others were the police protecting Congress!!

What in the world. Trump’s complaining about the insurrectionists not being armed like the police? My gosh, the Dems need to blast this everywhere. Show footage of January 6 and then Trump’s words.

Yeah, this is where I wish the Harris campaign would be using some of that billion dollars they've raised. Pump out different ads when Trump says something stupid and get it up online at least. If South Park can do an episode that includes some event that happened a few days before then surely they can get some staffers adroit at editing to put together something.

 

[theel4life]

Trump is clearly declining and fast. He looks and sounds horrible.

 

[aGDevil2k]

Has he had a stroke?

 

[rodoheel]

I think it is counter-productive to assume or insist that everyone who disagrees with you politically is just stupid or mislead.

Of course they aren't - some of them are selfish, greedy, cruel, xenophobic, and/or racist instead.

Obviously that's a little tongue in cheek. I know plenty of intelligent, kind, and otherwise fairly normal people who vote for Republicans. Some of them are even going to be voting for Trump, though some aren't. But I also think we need to recognize that Trump changes the calculus here. I wouldn't have said that everyone who voted for Mitt Romney or John McCain or George W. Bush was stupid, misled, or evil. I do say that about Trump. I think it's pretty clear that anyone who thinks Trump and his plans would be good for the country's economy is either stupid or misled. I think anyone who thinks it's a good idea to try to deport 11 million people is either stupid or misled. There may be some people who understand that those things are not true and will vote for Trump anyway for other reasons (including the ones I posted above). But there is simply a fundamental disagreement when it comes to Trump specifically that is unlike anything ever before. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea for Trump to run the country has made some sort of mental, logical, or emotional error along the way to that conclusion. It's not, like, some banal disagreement over the role of government in society or what the highest income tax rate should be.

 

[Carolina Fever]

Has he had a stroke?

 

[CFordUNC]

"Natural causes, if you're listening....."

Locker room talk!

 

[Gmonet]

I've got family members who I know are going to vote for Trump, but other than that they are basically "normal." But I've got a couple of friends, including randman, who were solidly liberal but then just went off the rails. Granted, it happened to randman going on 40 years ago but he almost overnight became basically what hardcore Maga people are today. More concerning is another friend who is definitely plenty smart, good family, very comfortable financially, etc., and she too went completely off the rails. Totally antivax, pro Trump (in fact her biggest complaint on Trump is the role he played in greenlighting the covid vaccine) plus several other pet conspiracy theories (something to do with 5G I think). It's sad when a friend just snaps like that...

20ish years ago I had a good buddy descend into craziness - thought he was communicating with Bill Gates and various world leaders on the chat board of some penny stock he believed was going revolutionize the world. Lost his house, inheritance and eventually his wife. At the time I thought this was an isolated 'him' issue, but after watching what has happened the last 10-15 years, I think there is an order of magnitude more latent schizophrenia in the human population than anyone would have guessed. I guy I knew in high school recently committed suicide after going down rabbit holes, becoming violent/angry about the world and losing his job/family, and quite a few folks in my broader, educated, upper middle class community are on this track to a greater or lesser extent.

People bemoan the lack of social interaction caused by the internet, but obviously the bigger issue is the facilitation of too much interaction unchecked by any community norms. Used to be that each local community may have had their 'crazy person' (figure of speech), but those people were generally isolated and, for better or worse, somewhat to totally shunned. Now our brilliant worldwide communications platform has enabled them to connect with one another, and create areas where other susceptible folks, historically kept balanced by the web of local interactions, have become untethered from reality. I often think about my buddy and look at him as the canary in the coal mine.

 

[superrific]

I dunno. I know plenty of lawyers who support Trump and they are not idiots, and unfortunately I know some Harris supporters who are absolute morons. There are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who have a reasonable basis for supporting one side or the other due to whatever issues are most dear to them, but tend to be tribal about sticking with a side regardless of obvious flaws in a particular candidate. There are others who see the flaws and simply do not care -- they are aching for that upper class tax cut, for instance (to paraphrase Krusty the Clown), or have deeply based and genuine opposition to abortion, say, or believe that LGBTQ rights are more important than anything else and they would rather have a corrupt leader who agrees with them.

I think it is counter-productive to assume or insist that everyone who disagrees with you politically is just stupid or mislead. Plenty of people are just as baffled by support of Kamala Harris as I am by support of Trump. I mean, sure, they're wrong about plenty of stuff, in my opinion, but that doesn't make them dumb. Frankly, in America, if you don't get the votes of stupid people, you are going to lose in a landslide. But the range of intelligence of people supporting one side or the other runs the entire spectrum on both sides of the divide. Yes, there is an increasing concentration of educated voters on the Democratic side of the equation currently, but that has ebbed and flowed over the years as educated voters generally tend to flee from populist politics. And there are PLENTY of really bright people without college degrees and plenty of abject idiots with college degrees.

I'm going to start a new thread on this because discussions 81 pages into a thread tend to be less than robust.

 

[rodoheel]

One of my law school classmates (who was no longer practicing law) went full-on QAnon around the time of the pandemic. Absolutely bizarre to watch. A person with a law degree posting things about, like, kidnapped children held in massive underground facilities all across the world.

 

[CRHeel94]

Have to say that my Latinos did pretty well with their questions last night.

Trump is such a con man. It really is a facepalm situation. How the fuck can this guy be in such a clse race.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

20ish years ago I had a good buddy descend into craziness - thought he was communicating with Bill Gates and various world leaders on the chat board of some penny stock he believed was going revolutionize the world. Lost his house, inheritance and eventually his wife. At the time I thought this was an isolated 'him' issue, but after watching what has happened the last 10-15 years, I think there is an order of magnitude more latent schizophrenia in the human population than anyone would have guessed. I guy I knew in high school recently committed suicide after going down rabbit holes, becoming violent/angry about the world and losing his job/family, and quite a few folks in my broader, educated, upper middle class community are on this track to a greater or lesser extent.

People bemoan the lack of social interaction caused by the internet, but obviously the bigger issue is the facilitation of too much interaction unchecked by any community norms. Used to be that each local community may have had their 'crazy person' (figure of speech), but those people were generally isolated and, for better or worse, somewhat to totally shunned. Now our brilliant worldwide communications platform has enabled them to connect with one another, and create areas where other susceptible folks, historically kept balanced by the web of local interactions, have become untethered from reality. I often think about my buddy and look at him as the canary in the coal mine.

Agreed on the schizophrenia issue. In fact I've become convinced over the years that the percentage of people in our population who suffer from serious mental and/or emotional illness is far higher than is generally known or believed. The difference is that a good many of these people are still able to hold a job and pay their bills and so on, and so their issues get overlooked. But they still have serious issues, you just don't notice it as easily.

 

[Healing]

One of my law school classmates (who was no longer practicing law) went full-on QAnon around the time of the pandemic. Absolutely bizarre to watch. A person with a law degree posting things about, like, kidnapped children held in massive underground facilities all across the world.

For a lot of folks, educated or not, the conspiracy is merely the cope for the fear and anxiety created by a lack of agency. The pandemic was a rational trigger for mass coping, some healthily, some deleteriously. Was your classmate experiencing other upending events? Health concerns, relationships falling apart, stress at work or losing a job, collapsing financial circumstances, all make folks more susceptible to off the rails shit.

 

[dukeman92]

 

[CFordUNC]

Yes and yes. I, too, know many very smart lawyers voting for Trump.

Like most of us, they are tribal voters who see the world through their church, friends, childhood psychology, etc. There aren't too many @CFordUNC's out there who cross over after those attitudes are set.

I know I can only speak for myself, but the biggest impetus behind my crossover was simply that I got out of rural, small-town North Carolina. It's not even just that I went to UNC, although I'd like to think being at Carolina and being exposed for the first time in my life to a very wide variety of different backgrounds and perspectives played at least some part in it. But for most of the last 11 years since I graduated, I've had a job that takes me all over the country- from major cities and metro areas, to midsized cities, to small towns- and has introduced me to people of all races, ethnicities, socioeconomic circumstances, philosophies, viewpoints, walks of life, etc. I think that exposure to other places and other people has been the most significant driving factor in my ideological crossover. Once I learned for myself that all of these different types of places and all of these different types of people *weren't* big and bad and scary like I'd been made to believe growing up in small-town rural North Carolina, in the Southern Baptist church, it became a hell of a lot more difficult for me to adhere to Republican/conservative bullshit that told me that I needed to be deathly afraid or outright disdainful of those places and people.

 

[ZenMode]

I dunno. I know plenty of lawyers who support Trump and they are not idiots, and unfortunately I know some Harris supporters who are absolute morons. There are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who have a reasonable basis for supporting one side or the other due to whatever issues are most dear to them, but tend to be tribal about sticking with a side regardless of obvious flaws in a particular candidate. There are others who see the flaws and simply do not care -- they are aching for that upper class tax cut, for instance (to paraphrase Krusty the Clown), or have deeply based and genuine opposition to abortion, say, or believe that LGBTQ rights are more important than anything else and they would rather have a corrupt leader who agrees with them.

I think it is counter-productive to assume or insist that everyone who disagrees with you politically is just stupid or mislead. Plenty of people are just as baffled by support of Kamala Harris as I am by support of Trump. I mean, sure, they're wrong about plenty of stuff, in my opinion, but that doesn't make them dumb. Frankly, in America, if you don't get the votes of stupid people, you are going to lose in a landslide. But the range of intelligence of people supporting one side or the other runs the entire spectrum on both sides of the divide. Yes, there is an increasing concentration of educated voters on the Democratic side of the equation currently, but that has ebbed and flowed over the years as educated voters generally tend to flee from populist politics. And there are PLENTY of really bright people without college degrees and plenty of abject idiots with college degrees.

I think education, not necessarily formal/college, can help with some things. For example, if you are educated on the ins and outs of voting, I think you are less likely to believe in The Steal. If you are educated or employed in a medical industry, you are probably less likely to be an anti-vaxxer.

Beyond that, it's really a crap shoot. Kind of like being religious, and believing everything associated with religions, it really ends up being out of the control of each individual person. It could be how you were raised. It could be that, on your first trek into cable news, you happened to pick Fox over CNN. It could be an influential person in your life that inadvertently shaped your initial political views. The number of external influences, that shapes us, are virtually limitless, but I don't believe intelligence is necessarily a big factor.

 

[rodoheel]

For a lot of folks, educated or not, the conspiracy is merely the cope for the fear and anxiety created by a lack of agency. The pandemic was a rational trigger for mass coping, some healthily, some deleteriously. Was your classmate experiencing other upending events? Health concerns, relationships falling apart, stress at work or losing a job, collapsing financial circumstances, all make folks more susceptible to off the rails shit.

I don't really know the classmate well enough to know what else they were going through, but I'm sure you're right that more was going on behind the scenes. Like with may other QAnon-ers, the classmate had friends and family pleading with the them to come back to reality and being met only with hostility (to be clear, this was all stuff we could see happening publicly on FB; who knows what was happening behind the scenes).

I guess nobody ever thinks that they themselves are going to go a little cuckoo, but it's hard for me to imagine how I would ever get to that point on something so facially bizarre. Who knows what would happen if I experienced some sort of traumatic life event, though.