Our genius MAGA electorate is getting EXACTLY what the minority of voters told them they would get.
The hardest part about dealing with stupid is that it can’t be fixed. If prices dropped tomorrow these people would vote for him again! They are simply incapable of thinking deeply or strategically.
They'd vote for him even if prices go up. Suddenly they are "for" higher gas prices. Make up any reason; it doesn't matter. All of these "America First-no new wars" people are supporting Trump at an 88% rate (poll I saw showing that 88% of self-identified MAGA voters approve of the Iran conflict).
There was the one woman in Pennsylvania who was not pleased with the effects of Trump's 'excursion'. I paraphrase, 'Trump is a total piece of shit and I voted for him three times. I'm an idiot.' Some are capable of finally seeing the truth, and the self insight that goes along with it.
And now that he's allowing Iran to sell oil to increase the amount of oil on the market and lower gas prices AND allow them to use that money to fund fighting us, you can see the deep, 3D chess moves this guy makes.
Oh come on, we're liberals. Of course we complained. When do we not complain? It's our God-given right as Americans. They complained, we complained. Newsflash, nobody likes high prices.
The percentage of MAGA voters whob still support Trump boggles the mind. I remind myself that Trump appeals to the poorly educated. As Scott said, they are a cult and they seem to love Trump come hell or high water -- and he has delivered both, in spades!
They love him and his hatred of black and brown people and they love that they get to say that out loud. The rest is just a distraction. Obscene gas prices included.
💯 - you are describing our neighbor. He is trying to survive on his Social Security, can barely pay his bills, has had to refinance his house multiple times so will never pay it off, they are down to one barely working vehicle - but you see his Social media and it's all cheering on ICE and sticking it to the "illegals". When I see him I always remember what Sarah says about that hardcore 30% of MAGA - they can be homeless, starving and completely naked standing on the street corner still wearing the red hat.
If only the problem were stupidity or ignorance. That can be fixed in most cases even if the ignorance is willful. The problem is actually more sinister than that. I think the best and more sinister explanation is that much of Maga is in a cult. It’s been argued well elsewhere and is supported by the social psychology literature. Maga is an identity for many people. They can no more turn their back on Maga than they can take one step away from themselves.
And yet the democowards are busy trying to parrot right wing talking points (tax cuts!) instead of pounding on the right like they should. Total political cowardice wrapped in moral superiority.
Ha, ha you guys! Of course we lost: we made our own with a dull saw and a jackknife. The folks whose parent had wood working shops in the basement, or garage, always won.
You got it all wrong. The dilithium crystals aren’t the power source, they don’t interact with antimatter, and focus the antimatter stream in the matter/antimatter intermix chamber. Or something like that. If any of that was real. Ah, who knows!
My grandpa always told me to never agree to an arm wrestling match with a Vulcan. He told me “Those Vulcans look skinny, and fragile boyo, but they got three times your strength, and are twice as fast.” Words to live by.
Any company can build to the point where it seems monopolistic, even if the raw materials are the wind and sun. They need the incentive to do so and it is in our long term interest to incentivize them even at the expense of a seeming monopoly.
When the xenophobic, anti- Democracy forces on the American right wrote its 2025 plan for America under Trump, we can wonder if what we are living through all across American governance, is what those fellow Americans had in mind.
Did they imagine a rogue, fully armed, police state? Did they imagine a DOJ void of the rule of law? Did they imagine a hateful, demented lying leader whose use of the word "WE" means "ME"? Did they imagine a head of HHS who likes diseases more than cures?
And so on and so forth.
Building a White Nationalist theocracy to replace our Democracy and Constitution has been afoot in America for years. Today, it has brought a new version of our ongoing civil war. We won the last civil war. When we win this one, it is imperative we update and fortify our Constitution to better withstand such vicious assaults. We are a far different country than the agrarian country of our founders. It's way past time we fix the compromises the founders made that enable minority rule in America.
part of the problem is that when we won the Civil war, we thought we had fortified the Constitution then (and we did). It's the supreme court that has other ideas
A 21 member supreme court with terms staggered to make sure no more than 7 nominations could be made every 8 years and public financial record and political relationships disclosures would stop the nonsense.
Merrill - “We won the last civil war” …or did it just go into intermittent remission? I wonder what my Black neighbors would say for ’date the civil war ended’
I think it's still a legitimate question along the lines of Dark JVL: are lower information voters, often of color and working class, paying attention, even now? When we went to the last No Kings march, the crowd was 97% white in a county that is only 65% white. The Bulwark show in Dallas: 99% white. Same folks; educated, involved politcally. But where is everyone else? The Bulwark show isn't free; I get that, but No Kings is. POC are going to backslide a lot earlier if things continue to go south compared to the average well-educated white person with comfortable levels of investments and savings.
I mentioned Kristi Noem a couple days ago at work. A 53-year-old coworker said, with a confused look on her face, "Who is Kristi Noem?" Never underestimate the -- not stupidity, mind you -- the reckless and selfish indifference of the American people.
I think you make the exactly right point. Winning back political control of Congress in Nov and POTUS in 2028 will take engaging less involved voters. The real MAGA cultists will endure no matter what. They live in an information sealed universe.
I get what you’re saying about typically less-engaged voters, but I think you need to update your priors. POC are not Trump’s base of support. His support among Latino voters has cratered, and his support from black voters is no higher now than it was in 2016. His highest levels of support continue to come from white voters, especially men. White voters tend to support Trump almost 2:1 compared to Latinos and 3:1 compared to Black voters.
In any event, race is a less salient predictor of support for Trump than it used to be. The more meaningful dividing line, at least as of the 2024 election, was education.
All true. The challenge is that overwhelming money is on the side of the status quo - and especially the maintenance of rural state power. A national divorce may be more likely than national reform. We who believe in the urgent need to fix that's broken must find ways to reach and convince rural Americans that their future depends on reform, not looking back to an idealized place that never was. Without falling into culture-war traps that the moneyed will set at every turn.
Today's wealthy have their wealth in a lot of places. Collapse in the US just means they'll go to a different country and continue to live as they live now.
If I wanted to cause a recession, I would institute import taxes in the form of tariffs, deport hundreds of thousands of laborers from the U.S., and start a war in a region that's critical to the global economy.
It's a sign of the decadence of our society that we focus incessantly on rising gas prices to the exclusion of almost any mention of the ghastly human cost of this war.
Well, I'll do it - focus on one of the 'other' costs of this war: approx 14,000 injured, 1,400 dead in Iran. I saw a pic this morning of an Iranian woman holding the body of a child wrapped in a shroud, judging by the size of the dead child, looked to be about 4 yo. She held the child as a mother would hold a sleeping child. Her face was not contorted in rage or grief, but rather it was calm and quite beautiful.
Regarding Trump's approval: the Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that 27% of voters approve of his handling on gas prices. Put another way, 27% of voters want to pay more for gas! Who are these 27% of people? And only 32% of people approve of his handling of the economy. 33% approve of his handling of "the cost of living". Yet, he has overall a 38% approval rating.
This defies logic. "I voted for lower prices and this guy is wrecking the economy and single-handedly making me pay more at the pump. I hate it but I'll continue to approve of his job performance".
And 60% of voters say that Trump bears the most blame for increasing gas prices by invading Iran. Who are these other 40% and who are they blaming? Biden? There is your LIV and Trump cultist crowd right there.
The weakest president ever, sleepy joe, can’t even sign his own documents, never accomplished anything. 14 months out of office though, he’s working all the levers of power. What a guy, Jack!
According to David French, that's because they hate Democrats more than paying more for gas. He beat the hated HRC. Whatever he does, they are forever loyal to him for that fact.
Forgive me for continuing to harp on this, but the reason for the disconnect is us failing to apprehend the difference with Truth and Knowledge.
Non-MAGANs think the two terms above are part of the same construct: facts buttress Knowledge (e.g., gas, cost-of-living prices) that are incontestable.
MAGANs have deeply-held insecurities based on their internal guilt for being prejudiced, patriarchal people. So when Rush, Tucker, and Trump come along and PRAISE them as patriotic, righteous, and heritage-loving precisely because of their prejudices, a tuning fork goes off in their brain. "These guys get me! Yes, I AM all those great things--not the evil oppressor others call me (and I know I am)."
MAGANs are reacting to a "Truth" statement: that is, a description of a much-desired social fabric where MAGANs are indeed patriotic heroes. Every society has its own dominant Truth--a set of statements crafted, circulated, and repeated over and over and by those seeking power. These Truth statements (the ones made by Rush and others) overwhelm mere facts--which in MAGAN eyes are "alternate," contestable, a sly trick by the radical Left, etc. And can therefore be waived away like an annoying fly.
The difference between Truth and Knowledge is most clearly seen in every MAGAN's own words: "We don't care what Trump says (i.e., facts or whatever), we know what he means (a society based on THEIR shared Truths)."
"guilt for being prejudiced, patriarchal people"? I don't see it as the driver. I see hatred for the educated, AKA the radical Left, who look down on them.
You are right--it is hatred for those who dare to point out the prejudice. IMHO, nobody feels hatred unless there is ALREADY a burning contradiction inside them. For example, if you pointed out a misdeed to a normal person, they would likely make up some excuse or even be apologetic; they wouldn't come at you like you're the Devil who's destroying their whole world.
Do I "hate" Trump? I honestly don't feel that emotion: I feel sadness that so many people have given their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to a petulant child.
Mark, they have been told on right-wing media for decades, since Limbaugh, that the Left is destroying their world, their America. That's the basis for the hate. In addition, they hate anyone who points out their prejudice.
BTW, I freely admit that I hate Trump. He's a lying, amoral thug devoid of any feelings for others' pain, AKA a sociopath. He has led a surprisingly large portion of Americans to destroy our liberal democracy. They never liked it. Now they have a champion in the White House. That's why they're so attached to him.
Do I want to see him annihilated? Only by a free and fair election.
Yes, the "Truth" that Rush, FOX, and others has been spewing for so long has seeped into their very souls.
I guess what I was pointing out that hating Trump merely feeds into their whataboutism, it's-us-vs.-them psyche.
As a brilliant philosopher (Foucault) has said, you can't change what's in people's heads; but you can change the dynamic social fabric with a new Truth based on statements that reflect today's new reality (tech bros, social media, climate change, changing world alliances). That takes money from democratic leaders and fellow travelers.
You have replace Trump's Truth with another, better one.
You’re welcome. Foucault! Certainly have heard of him but I never read his work. When I was in college, he was considered very Far Left and radical. I wasn’t that far Left.
I’m a retired social studies teacher, so I look at politics as a social system with a lot of social psychology as well. When I first studied social change, I learned that there is a typical pattern. The majority of people will change their behavior if the social groups they identify with begin to change.
The vast majority of Americans are either early or late adopters. They’re risk-averse, unlike the innovators and change agents who introduce the new behavior, so they’re waiting to see if their fellow adopters are moving toward the new behavior.
The new behavior in MAGAs case is acceptance of sexual minorities who violate the Bible’s sexual morality and seeing racial minorities and women as equal. Those changes in behavior have been underway since the 60s. MAGA represents a backlash where skeptical late majorities and laggards, supported by entrenched, powerful incumbents, resist the change. I think it is Trump’s great insight after jumping on the Birther conspiracy that these people were pissed off at all this social change and felt they were not represented by the GOP; he could exploit that.
Mr. Premo: I think that is the best summation of our situation that I have ever read. What should be our dominant truth statement? Maybe that all people are created equal? (I did not come up with that one.)
So the Founding Fathers memorialized their Truth statements in the Declaration of Independence--as you rightly point out. Unfortunately those statements of 250 years ago only partially apply to the problems we face today. Which are: challenges from tech bros/oil interests who see government as a pain in the a$$ that should be done away with; INTERNAL tyrants who also believe THEY should be king, untouched by the masses; climate change caused by the above; AND a digital world they wield to surveil, influence, and enforce on their behalf.
A new Truth has to speak to ALL of those issues. And believe it or not, some MAGANs will actually come aboard because they deeply, deeply hate "elites" (most of whom are busy enslaving them).
At any rate, the purpose of Truth statements is to motivate the populace to act in support of the vision. "All men are created equal, etc." did just that 250 years ago. It was a beautiful thing.
Developing those statements, circulating them, etc. requires inventing competing versions of FOX, Truth(!) Social, et al to broadcast this new Truth to ears wanting to hear it.
Trump's personal approval rating will always be higher than his polling on various issues because he has a personality cult. They love the guy and will continue to say they approve of Trump himself, even if they express disapproval on this or that issue. When it comes to Trump's base, think of him less like a politician and more like a rock star. They may not like all of his songs, but they still love the star.
They blame Israel. Trump was pretty clear about that in the tweets or however he puts forth his "policy statements" quoted in the newsletter. Gas prices high? Blame Israel, not Trump.
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
I'm practicing being understated so I don't scream all the time.
If I've learned anything from decades of Fox News and hate radio, it's that every problem has one clear solution... get tougher. We should drop more bombs on Iran energy facilities and all will be well. Right? Right? Hey, why has the entire world collapsed? Maybe more bombs will help!
This is a long running theme in the right I think. My Republican family members will insist that if only we had been tougher in Vietnam the outcome would have changed. We dropped more conventional explosives on Vietnam than we did in all of WW2.
My late father, born in 1936, thought that about Vietnam. It was a holdover of his remembering the end of WWII from a child's perspective...dropping the bomb, bombing Dresden in Germany. In his mind that stuff wins a war, any war.
The VietNam war was premised on a THEORY, the Domino Theory (backed by zero evidence), that if we did not commence bombing it, Southeast Asia would all become communist.
The Iraq War was premised on the Bush Theory that they had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and it was too dangerous to wait until we had actual evidence that they had them (“we don’t want to wait until there is a mushroom cloud”), so we must do preventative bombing.
This war is premised on WMD 2.0, we wiped out their nuclear efforts 8 months ago, but in case they are even THINKING ABOUT trying again, we must bomb them out of the idea. More preventative bombing. We bomb the thoughts out of them.
It was the fault of those damn leftist woke communist hippies that tossed the tea overboard in Boston back in 1773.
If that never happened we'd have the country we we're supposed to have: only white male landowners could vote, women would have no rights, abortion would be outlawed, slavery would be legal, only white people from non-shithole countries could legally apply for citizenship, each year we'd have yet another record-breaking trade and budget surplus, and so, so, so much more.
It would be great if they could watch this brief video about HR McMaster's book, "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam." He was Trump's National Security Advisor. He blames LVJ and his advisors for unclear and indecisive military planning. https://youtu.be/abbU9G8QWBo?si=uxHnV8hwN9hLvnkM
Several big Trump supporters are making lots of money from planes and bombs in this war. That's true for the AI people, and especially true for the local oil people. Oil prices are going up, and they will stay up, long after the actual crisis has passed. Millions have doed so a few can make billions. This has happened before, often.
“Trump is playing with fire here, but this sort of Mad King threat has worked for him in the past and could work again: At least for the moment, the attacks on energy seem to have stopped.”
His mad king act could work in the short-term to stem some of the losses and possibly save $200 oil; however, no matter how this plays out, we’ve been exposed as a toothless tiger and the results will reduce the US to a marginal player in international affairs—because of our incompetence and stupidity.
Bottom line, we’ve lost EU, S. Korea and Japan, have finally gotten the memo; don’t expect the US to come to their aid if China invades Taiwan—We’ve moved forces and air defense systems from Japan and S.Korea to th Middle East.
Not to mention, we’ve reduced our ability to defend our allies by wasting almost 15% of our munitions in 11 days—3 years or more to resupply. In addition, the Iranian’s—who have been defeated (apparently), just shot an F-35 in the air and forcing it to make an emergency landing, taking it out of the military theater.
Bottom line, when you add it up, we will be in a remarkably weaker position in the world than anytime after before WW2. Let that sink in!…:)
People like Trump can only think of it in terms of power, but that will always get it wrong. Yes, we have the most powerful military but Iran is showing us the limits of that power as did Iraq and Afghanistan. Our super power after WW2 was not our military, but our ability to provide stability and the rule of law to a trading system that integrated our former enemies and lead all of us to a freer and more prosperous future. Yes, we did provide security as well, but that wasn’t the secret sauce which was our stability and reliability. An unreliable, chaotic US is one which is no longer useful to the Europeans or our Asian allies. Donald only thinks in terms what is useful to him, not realizing others make similar calculations.
Just the opposite of our position at the end of WWI: A debtor nation going in and the world's leading creditor nation at the end. On our way to being the global superpower.
A competition in KY to see who is the biggest Trump suck-up is a depressing commentary on the psychosis of the Republican voter. Just rename the party the Trump party already. The only principle any of its voters hold at this point is "I believe what dear leader believes." It's a crazy state of affairs when 35% of the electorate voluntarily abandons all its critical faculties.
The Gabbard saga is fascinating, and all her present misery is well deserved. If it were 2021, when she was still nominally a Democrat, and Joe Biden did in Iran what Donald Trump is doing now, she would never shut up with invective and vituperation against Biden. Now that she's on the Trump admin payroll, she makes a mockery of any principles she professed to formerly hold, which just further confirms the GOP is the Trump party, and the only principle is loyalty to Trump. What did she ever really believe that made her so mad at Democrats she had to switch parties and torch the place on her way out?
It's why it's basically impossible to have any Republican on the political shows to offer a defense of MAGA, because they either don't believe anything or they will gladly say things they don't believe. You just end up platforming someone brimming with bad faith who has no compunction against lying to your audience.
Def an interesting tactic from Massie. He's not going to get back in Trump's good graces, but if he can downgrade his opponent's level of fealty to Deer Leader, he can probly get some MAGAs to stay home.
Yeah, I definitely understand why he's doing it, because it's really his only play. But man, it's shameful that this is how Republican voters have to be treated.
Oh please! Who let the dogs out, Donald? You got all excited for your little excursion and rubbed yourself too hard on the bottle and now the genie is out. No, you did not have to start this war in Iran and you should not have listened to Bibi’s whining. I did find it the height of hilarity yesterday when Netanyahu felt the need to clarify the US did not know about the pars field attack, and hadn’t made the US go to war for Israel. When the clarification provides not clarify.
On a more serious note The Guardian has been reporting the British teams at the negations with us and Iran felt the Iranians had offered what would have constituted a deal and was probably not their final offer meaning we could have pressed for more. The deal also apparently would have included the US being a partner in developing civilian nuclear energy in Iran at some point. So, no Donald, you did not have to start this war this war. If you had been more patient you probably could have had a big beautiful deal with Iran that may well have gotten the Norwegians attention and that Nobel Prize you so desire.
I saw that Guardian article too. It looks like Witkof and Kushner weren't really very interested in an agreement, too busy on their other assignment. Why do we not read anything about the so called negotiations in the US media?
Trying to be generous to Witkoff and Kushner when maybe I shouldn’t be, but they aren’t qualified for the role so hard to say how seriously they took or did not take the negotiations — they don’t behave as people who are trained or have experience would. We should be having a candid conversation about those negotiations as it appears the Iranians did take them seriously, but that might require more discomfort than our media cares for.
Trump thought he could wag the dog and get in and out of Iran just fast enough to deflect from the Epstein files while claiming another victory against the Iranian nuclear threat. He did not plan to stay for long, I'm sure he did not plan for the Straits of Hormuz to be blocked, nor for the Iranians to continue to keep it together and go on the offensive. No matter what he does, we need to continue to hit as hard as we can on decoding those Epstein files and his financial ties to Russia.
When my brother and sister told me in 2024 that they were going to vote for Trump, I was flabbergasted when they explained it was because they admired his "leadership" skills. I pointed back to the last year of his first presidency and said he had failed the leadership test on two levels: a national emergency (Covid) and a personal one (losing the election). I did not sway their opinion and I dreaded what could happen if he were re-elected and faced an emergency once again.
Now we know, and, like his response to Covid, it's as muddle-minded as we could have expected, with different demands and plans trotted out almost daily. At some point, especially if he begins to think he's losing the war, things will become as desperate as his reaction to his defeat by Joe Biden. Add in the political loss expected in the midterms, and there's no desperate action he will not take.
Re: "A new Politico poll finds that only 12 percent of 2024 Trump voters oppose the war in Iran so far."
And...
Re: "He’s fighting just to get back to the levels of support he had this time last year as the midterms loom and his coalition crashes down around him."
Okay, so which is it? Only 12% of the people who voted for him oppose the war. That means 88% are still with him on it. But, at the same time, his coalition is crashing down around him? I'm sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. Which is it?
And I keep reading that oil prices are "skyrocketing," but I look at global crude oil prices and they're hovering just below $100/bbl every day, which means they're a LOT higher than they were before the war, but seem to have reached a plateau.
My working assumption is that there is no level of personal financial ruin that will dissuade Trump voters from their support. They can lose their businesses, farms, healthcare, health, life savings, personal relationships, literally everything that makes life worth living and STILL support him because to do otherwise would mean admitting they made a mistake.
Sometimes I think I might be wrong about that, but then, the next day, the hypothesis seems to be proved. This is one of those days. Eighty-eight percent of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 are with him on this war which has increased their gas prices, a thing of great importance to them. It has also involved us in another Mideast war, another thing they said they cared about and Trump said he would not do. There is just nothing that will blast these people out of their Trump bubble.
"My working assumption is that there is no level of personal financial ruin that will dissuade Trump voters from their support. They can lose their businesses, farms, healthcare, health, life savings, personal relationships, literally everything that makes life worth living and STILL support him because to do otherwise would mean admitting they made a mistake." You've aptly described the cult mentality that is shared by most Trump supporters.
My MAGA friends on Facebook (mostly in rural America) after their initial enthusiasm have gone strangely silent. If asked they probably all would say they support. But their seeming unwillingness to express that support in the antisocial media may show a degree of ambivalence about it all. This is in direct contrast to their enthusiastic defense of the entire mass deportation agenda and the "one and done" kidnapping of Maduro which they all thought was brilliant. This about rationalizing after the fact rather than believing in advance. By this time Trump voters are expert a delusional rationalization.
I liken their devotion to T to their Christianity. They believe that Jesus is the one and only son of God. What Jesus said and taught is irrelevant to their belief, it's only about that one thing, to which they attach anything they like. T is their earth-bound savior, what he says and does is irrelevant. It's T's singular status as earthly savior, and such a status requires unquestioning devotion.
It's so demoralizing. You're quite right; despite the commentary about a fracturing coalition, the data don't bear it out. When 88% support him doing the exact opposite of why they voted for him, then a significant portion of this country is utterly lost. When a Trump-Iran war gets 88-12 approval from the same voters who would have given a Biden-Iran war 0-100 approval, it feels like everything we're doing here in the pro-democracy coalition is pointless.
Truly the only winners in this war are Putin and Xi as they gleefully watch the US waste all our offensive ammunition on a country that couldn't do us any harm in the first place. Putin's oil and Natural gas are safe, China is unaffected by Iran's blocking the Strait. This could not be any better for Russia if Putin had designed it himself, then maybe he did.
The underlying incentives here are why I thought Trump would TACO on Iran. His family is now tightly linked to the Gulf States economic success, but the longer the war goes on the more longterm damage that does to places like Qatar and the UAE. If they are not seen as islands of stability, then who will want to do business of live there. This war may permanently damage their economic future. The other reason was that a deal with Iran would have unlocked an economic bonanza for the Gulf Stares with business deals in Iran thereby further enriching the Trump family who I am sure would have gotten a cut from any such deal. He seems intent on killing his own family goose with this war.
It's my understanding that MBS of Saudi Arabia is cheering the war on. He's enjoying the higher prices. When Trump says "we" do better when the price of oil is high, he doesn't mean the general public.
Our genius MAGA electorate is getting EXACTLY what the minority of voters told them they would get.
The hardest part about dealing with stupid is that it can’t be fixed. If prices dropped tomorrow these people would vote for him again! They are simply incapable of thinking deeply or strategically.
They'd vote for him even if prices go up. Suddenly they are "for" higher gas prices. Make up any reason; it doesn't matter. All of these "America First-no new wars" people are supporting Trump at an 88% rate (poll I saw showing that 88% of self-identified MAGA voters approve of the Iran conflict).
It's a cult. Wow, who knew?
They'll pay $4.00/gallon for gas and SWEAR the price is actually $1.25/gallon.
There was the one woman in Pennsylvania who was not pleased with the effects of Trump's 'excursion'. I paraphrase, 'Trump is a total piece of shit and I voted for him three times. I'm an idiot.' Some are capable of finally seeing the truth, and the self insight that goes along with it.
I loved it! It could be a great campaign add. (suitable for framing)
Rick Wilson was salivating over the potential in such an ad.
If that woman gave one of her balls to the average male Trump supporter, they would both have one.
Yet in 2028, she will vote party over country again. She's just mad it's effecting her personally now.
I'd like to hope that, finally, at long last, he's lost a voter.
Oh but Hunter's laptop and Joe's autopen!
And her emails!
cankles & cackles...
Trump has cankles and hackles.
Ben gazzy ! Vince Foster !
And dont forget, Gas prices were $20.00 per gallon under Sleepy Joe - and $25.00 under Obama
I tried to buy gas yesterday but they wouldn't let me pay ! It's free from now on thanks to good king Donald.
👑
And now that he's allowing Iran to sell oil to increase the amount of oil on the market and lower gas prices AND allow them to use that money to fund fighting us, you can see the deep, 3D chess moves this guy makes.
As I've seen on-line: " you liberals didn't complain when gas was $5.12 under Biden."
Yeah, I've seen that too. Okay, so even if you grant that, THEY were complaining back then, so why aren't THEY complaining now?
Shhhhh, they only care about gas prices when Fox tells them to. 😀
"I'm rubber, you're glue. what ever you say bounces off me and sticks to you"!
The line I've employed online that usually shuts them up is, "So Trump is aspiring to be like Joe Biden then?"
Except that it was caused by Covid, not something political.
And the invasion of Ukraine, not direct reckless action by the US.
Right.
Oh come on, we're liberals. Of course we complained. When do we not complain? It's our God-given right as Americans. They complained, we complained. Newsflash, nobody likes high prices.
I've always been a serious liberal, been saying for 50 years that if I ain't complaining it means I'm dead.
Nope, the meme says differently. 😀
Not true around here I never paid anything near 5 12 a gallon between 21 and 24 .
Not in California. $7.29 for premium in Truckee yesterday.
Hi neighbor :) In Truckee also.
We took a little trip over to Michigan earlier this week and it was pretty much $3.999 everywhere.
I've said this before as long as he torments black people, brown people and uppity women he is golden with his base.
I agree. As long as Trump is harming "those people ", his base is happy.
The percentage of MAGA voters whob still support Trump boggles the mind. I remind myself that Trump appeals to the poorly educated. As Scott said, they are a cult and they seem to love Trump come hell or high water -- and he has delivered both, in spades!
They love him and his hatred of black and brown people and they love that they get to say that out loud. The rest is just a distraction. Obscene gas prices included.
💯 - you are describing our neighbor. He is trying to survive on his Social Security, can barely pay his bills, has had to refinance his house multiple times so will never pay it off, they are down to one barely working vehicle - but you see his Social media and it's all cheering on ICE and sticking it to the "illegals". When I see him I always remember what Sarah says about that hardcore 30% of MAGA - they can be homeless, starving and completely naked standing on the street corner still wearing the red hat.
Sadly this is correct.
If only the problem were stupidity or ignorance. That can be fixed in most cases even if the ignorance is willful. The problem is actually more sinister than that. I think the best and more sinister explanation is that much of Maga is in a cult. It’s been argued well elsewhere and is supported by the social psychology literature. Maga is an identity for many people. They can no more turn their back on Maga than they can take one step away from themselves.
Why do you think they wouldn't vote for him if prices stay up? It was Biden's fault ... every good MAGAnut knows that.
It is now likely oil prices will remain high thru 2027. (CNN)
What the fork is the difference in one more year? 2028 has such a wonderful ring for the final Blue Tsunami.
And yet the democowards are busy trying to parrot right wing talking points (tax cuts!) instead of pounding on the right like they should. Total political cowardice wrapped in moral superiority.
And stupid begets ignorance.... which is also hard to fix because of the stupid.
"Somebody does something stupid, that's human. If they don't stop when they see it's wrong, that's a fool." Elvis Presley
If only there was another way to get energy that didn’t involve digging shit up from the ground and burning it. 🤔
You mean the woke energy?! We can’t use that! I need my gender affirming truck to run to Lowe’s and then I need to complain about getting 15 mpg.
Gender affirming truck! A +
Is this copyrighted? 🙂
Haha, saw that online somewhere, but it fits.
Fun fact! Those come in electric too. Even Elon made one. It’s super tuff and isn’t remotely ridiculous in appearance. :-)
Exactly. I whittled one just like it for a pinewood derby back in 1962. Yeah I lost but so what it was a dumb contest anyway 😡😢😭
Me too. It was rigged. It was so unfair.
Ha, ha you guys! Of course we lost: we made our own with a dull saw and a jackknife. The folks whose parent had wood working shops in the basement, or garage, always won.
I like Emotional Support Vehicle.
What is this Star Trek? 🤣
They said everything would run on dilithium crystals by now.
You got it all wrong. The dilithium crystals aren’t the power source, they don’t interact with antimatter, and focus the antimatter stream in the matter/antimatter intermix chamber. Or something like that. If any of that was real. Ah, who knows!
Greg - they can’t put it on the teevee if it isn’t real. FCC law!
Of course. How silly of me!
Quick, the Volcan mind meld.
My grandpa always told me to never agree to an arm wrestling match with a Vulcan. He told me “Those Vulcans look skinny, and fragile boyo, but they got three times your strength, and are twice as fast.” Words to live by.
Oh, and never ever trust a laughing Vulcan!
vulcan,please …
Sorry,Been along time since watched the Original Star Trek!
Logic is the cement of my mind. With which I ascend from chaos. Using reason as my guide.
“The bullets are unreal. Without body. They are illusions only. Shadows without substance…”
"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad" - Mr Spock
HERETIC!
😘
Yeah, but how can Exxon put a monopoly on the sun and wind?
lol. Those assholes had their chance to pivot. They were earlier to the party than just about anyone.
(For reference: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/)
Any company can build to the point where it seems monopolistic, even if the raw materials are the wind and sun. They need the incentive to do so and it is in our long term interest to incentivize them even at the expense of a seeming monopoly.
But President Orange Snake hates energy that comes from the sun or wind, because it’s woke and unmanly, so here we are.
Also spoils the view.
When the xenophobic, anti- Democracy forces on the American right wrote its 2025 plan for America under Trump, we can wonder if what we are living through all across American governance, is what those fellow Americans had in mind.
Did they imagine a rogue, fully armed, police state? Did they imagine a DOJ void of the rule of law? Did they imagine a hateful, demented lying leader whose use of the word "WE" means "ME"? Did they imagine a head of HHS who likes diseases more than cures?
And so on and so forth.
Building a White Nationalist theocracy to replace our Democracy and Constitution has been afoot in America for years. Today, it has brought a new version of our ongoing civil war. We won the last civil war. When we win this one, it is imperative we update and fortify our Constitution to better withstand such vicious assaults. We are a far different country than the agrarian country of our founders. It's way past time we fix the compromises the founders made that enable minority rule in America.
part of the problem is that when we won the Civil war, we thought we had fortified the Constitution then (and we did). It's the supreme court that has other ideas
A 21 member supreme court with terms staggered to make sure no more than 7 nominations could be made every 8 years and public financial record and political relationships disclosures would stop the nonsense.
Not sure about a 21-member Court, but yes on public financial and political disclosures.
A large number will dilute ethical or philosophical outliers.
Agree with that. Also the white people. "(T)he Supreme Court 'systematically undermined Congress's powers to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments.' . . . These decisions reflected a resurgence of racism, North and South . . ." (http://www.ericfoner.com/articles/SupCtRec.html#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%20over%20the%20past%20two,which%20Reconstruction%20legislation%20was%20enacted.)
Merrill - “We won the last civil war” …or did it just go into intermittent remission? I wonder what my Black neighbors would say for ’date the civil war ended’
Sadly true. One tragic thing we keep proving; legislating a "melting pot" civil society is really hard.
I think it's still a legitimate question along the lines of Dark JVL: are lower information voters, often of color and working class, paying attention, even now? When we went to the last No Kings march, the crowd was 97% white in a county that is only 65% white. The Bulwark show in Dallas: 99% white. Same folks; educated, involved politcally. But where is everyone else? The Bulwark show isn't free; I get that, but No Kings is. POC are going to backslide a lot earlier if things continue to go south compared to the average well-educated white person with comfortable levels of investments and savings.
I mentioned Kristi Noem a couple days ago at work. A 53-year-old coworker said, with a confused look on her face, "Who is Kristi Noem?" Never underestimate the -- not stupidity, mind you -- the reckless and selfish indifference of the American people.
my brother asked me that yesterday, just insane. who's she?
I think you make the exactly right point. Winning back political control of Congress in Nov and POTUS in 2028 will take engaging less involved voters. The real MAGA cultists will endure no matter what. They live in an information sealed universe.
I get what you’re saying about typically less-engaged voters, but I think you need to update your priors. POC are not Trump’s base of support. His support among Latino voters has cratered, and his support from black voters is no higher now than it was in 2016. His highest levels of support continue to come from white voters, especially men. White voters tend to support Trump almost 2:1 compared to Latinos and 3:1 compared to Black voters.
In any event, race is a less salient predictor of support for Trump than it used to be. The more meaningful dividing line, at least as of the 2024 election, was education.
All true. The challenge is that overwhelming money is on the side of the status quo - and especially the maintenance of rural state power. A national divorce may be more likely than national reform. We who believe in the urgent need to fix that's broken must find ways to reach and convince rural Americans that their future depends on reform, not looking back to an idealized place that never was. Without falling into culture-war traps that the moneyed will set at every turn.
French Aristocrats had all the money, too. Not that I want that sort of thing to happen. In fact, it'd be an utter disaster.
Today's wealthy have their wealth in a lot of places. Collapse in the US just means they'll go to a different country and continue to live as they live now.
Yeah, but this adventure is impacting the whole world.
If I wanted to cause a recession, I would institute import taxes in the form of tariffs, deport hundreds of thousands of laborers from the U.S., and start a war in a region that's critical to the global economy.
…but wouldn’t all that somehow get in the way of a commitment to release the Epstein files?
Trumpster sure knows how to distract from the Trump/Epstein files.
War crimes won't hide sex crimes, at least not for long.
It's a sign of the decadence of our society that we focus incessantly on rising gas prices to the exclusion of almost any mention of the ghastly human cost of this war.
Well, I'll do it - focus on one of the 'other' costs of this war: approx 14,000 injured, 1,400 dead in Iran. I saw a pic this morning of an Iranian woman holding the body of a child wrapped in a shroud, judging by the size of the dead child, looked to be about 4 yo. She held the child as a mother would hold a sleeping child. Her face was not contorted in rage or grief, but rather it was calm and quite beautiful.
Not to mention all the famine, displacement, and suffering that has been a foreseeable outcome of this unjust war of aggression.
Yes, I'l yelling at anybody, children are running across sand, fleeing, sleeping in sand, tents blown away. yet they sleep
Regarding Trump's approval: the Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that 27% of voters approve of his handling on gas prices. Put another way, 27% of voters want to pay more for gas! Who are these 27% of people? And only 32% of people approve of his handling of the economy. 33% approve of his handling of "the cost of living". Yet, he has overall a 38% approval rating.
This defies logic. "I voted for lower prices and this guy is wrecking the economy and single-handedly making me pay more at the pump. I hate it but I'll continue to approve of his job performance".
And 60% of voters say that Trump bears the most blame for increasing gas prices by invading Iran. Who are these other 40% and who are they blaming? Biden? There is your LIV and Trump cultist crowd right there.
Some people (we all know some of them) live in a constant state of denial and find comfort in the constant stream of contorted pro-trump propaganda.
Right?
The hardest thing to do is to admit you've been conned.
And love the demonization of Democrats.
Yes, this a big part of it.
Well none of this is Trump’s fault. It is the ghost of Joe Biden stalking about scaring the economy.
The weakest president ever, sleepy joe, can’t even sign his own documents, never accomplished anything. 14 months out of office though, he’s working all the levers of power. What a guy, Jack!
Somewhere there will be a large bill board saying; Do you miss me now?
It's our patriotic duty to pay more to Exxon so that Iran doesn't get a bomb!
Sounds like fodder for another JVL-Sarah confab!
According to David French, that's because they hate Democrats more than paying more for gas. He beat the hated HRC. Whatever he does, they are forever loyal to him for that fact.
Forgive me for continuing to harp on this, but the reason for the disconnect is us failing to apprehend the difference with Truth and Knowledge.
Non-MAGANs think the two terms above are part of the same construct: facts buttress Knowledge (e.g., gas, cost-of-living prices) that are incontestable.
MAGANs have deeply-held insecurities based on their internal guilt for being prejudiced, patriarchal people. So when Rush, Tucker, and Trump come along and PRAISE them as patriotic, righteous, and heritage-loving precisely because of their prejudices, a tuning fork goes off in their brain. "These guys get me! Yes, I AM all those great things--not the evil oppressor others call me (and I know I am)."
MAGANs are reacting to a "Truth" statement: that is, a description of a much-desired social fabric where MAGANs are indeed patriotic heroes. Every society has its own dominant Truth--a set of statements crafted, circulated, and repeated over and over and by those seeking power. These Truth statements (the ones made by Rush and others) overwhelm mere facts--which in MAGAN eyes are "alternate," contestable, a sly trick by the radical Left, etc. And can therefore be waived away like an annoying fly.
The difference between Truth and Knowledge is most clearly seen in every MAGAN's own words: "We don't care what Trump says (i.e., facts or whatever), we know what he means (a society based on THEIR shared Truths)."
"guilt for being prejudiced, patriarchal people"? I don't see it as the driver. I see hatred for the educated, AKA the radical Left, who look down on them.
Hi Sandy!
You are right--it is hatred for those who dare to point out the prejudice. IMHO, nobody feels hatred unless there is ALREADY a burning contradiction inside them. For example, if you pointed out a misdeed to a normal person, they would likely make up some excuse or even be apologetic; they wouldn't come at you like you're the Devil who's destroying their whole world.
Do I "hate" Trump? I honestly don't feel that emotion: I feel sadness that so many people have given their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to a petulant child.
Mark, they have been told on right-wing media for decades, since Limbaugh, that the Left is destroying their world, their America. That's the basis for the hate. In addition, they hate anyone who points out their prejudice.
BTW, I freely admit that I hate Trump. He's a lying, amoral thug devoid of any feelings for others' pain, AKA a sociopath. He has led a surprisingly large portion of Americans to destroy our liberal democracy. They never liked it. Now they have a champion in the White House. That's why they're so attached to him.
Do I want to see him annihilated? Only by a free and fair election.
Thanks again, Sandy.
Yes, the "Truth" that Rush, FOX, and others has been spewing for so long has seeped into their very souls.
I guess what I was pointing out that hating Trump merely feeds into their whataboutism, it's-us-vs.-them psyche.
As a brilliant philosopher (Foucault) has said, you can't change what's in people's heads; but you can change the dynamic social fabric with a new Truth based on statements that reflect today's new reality (tech bros, social media, climate change, changing world alliances). That takes money from democratic leaders and fellow travelers.
You have replace Trump's Truth with another, better one.
You’re welcome. Foucault! Certainly have heard of him but I never read his work. When I was in college, he was considered very Far Left and radical. I wasn’t that far Left.
I’m a retired social studies teacher, so I look at politics as a social system with a lot of social psychology as well. When I first studied social change, I learned that there is a typical pattern. The majority of people will change their behavior if the social groups they identify with begin to change.
This is the pattern: https://youtu.be/9QnfWhtujPA?si=leK_RpBcg-T1FFr6.
The vast majority of Americans are either early or late adopters. They’re risk-averse, unlike the innovators and change agents who introduce the new behavior, so they’re waiting to see if their fellow adopters are moving toward the new behavior.
The new behavior in MAGAs case is acceptance of sexual minorities who violate the Bible’s sexual morality and seeing racial minorities and women as equal. Those changes in behavior have been underway since the 60s. MAGA represents a backlash where skeptical late majorities and laggards, supported by entrenched, powerful incumbents, resist the change. I think it is Trump’s great insight after jumping on the Birther conspiracy that these people were pissed off at all this social change and felt they were not represented by the GOP; he could exploit that.
How to respond to this backlash? It’s not doubling down on attacking them for their racism and misogyny (Progressives take note). Here are some strategies that can be used to pre-empt, monitor, and reduce backlash: https://prevention-collaborative.org/guide-programming/coping-with-resistance-and-backlash/.
Mr. Premo: I think that is the best summation of our situation that I have ever read. What should be our dominant truth statement? Maybe that all people are created equal? (I did not come up with that one.)
Thank you, Bob, and apologize for the delay!
So the Founding Fathers memorialized their Truth statements in the Declaration of Independence--as you rightly point out. Unfortunately those statements of 250 years ago only partially apply to the problems we face today. Which are: challenges from tech bros/oil interests who see government as a pain in the a$$ that should be done away with; INTERNAL tyrants who also believe THEY should be king, untouched by the masses; climate change caused by the above; AND a digital world they wield to surveil, influence, and enforce on their behalf.
A new Truth has to speak to ALL of those issues. And believe it or not, some MAGANs will actually come aboard because they deeply, deeply hate "elites" (most of whom are busy enslaving them).
At any rate, the purpose of Truth statements is to motivate the populace to act in support of the vision. "All men are created equal, etc." did just that 250 years ago. It was a beautiful thing.
Developing those statements, circulating them, etc. requires inventing competing versions of FOX, Truth(!) Social, et al to broadcast this new Truth to ears wanting to hear it.
But that is the task we face.
Good points.
Another thing that defies logic; the 49.8% who voted for him.
Trump's personal approval rating will always be higher than his polling on various issues because he has a personality cult. They love the guy and will continue to say they approve of Trump himself, even if they express disapproval on this or that issue. When it comes to Trump's base, think of him less like a politician and more like a rock star. They may not like all of his songs, but they still love the star.
They blame Israel. Trump was pretty clear about that in the tweets or however he puts forth his "policy statements" quoted in the newsletter. Gas prices high? Blame Israel, not Trump.
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
I'm practicing being understated so I don't scream all the time.
Good, it's better for your voice. ☺️
If I've learned anything from decades of Fox News and hate radio, it's that every problem has one clear solution... get tougher. We should drop more bombs on Iran energy facilities and all will be well. Right? Right? Hey, why has the entire world collapsed? Maybe more bombs will help!
This is a long running theme in the right I think. My Republican family members will insist that if only we had been tougher in Vietnam the outcome would have changed. We dropped more conventional explosives on Vietnam than we did in all of WW2.
My late father, born in 1936, thought that about Vietnam. It was a holdover of his remembering the end of WWII from a child's perspective...dropping the bomb, bombing Dresden in Germany. In his mind that stuff wins a war, any war.
Yeah, we should have nuked them, and China, North Korea, both Iraq and Iran. What are those bombs for? But not Russia, because Putin likes me.
The VietNam war was premised on a THEORY, the Domino Theory (backed by zero evidence), that if we did not commence bombing it, Southeast Asia would all become communist.
The Iraq War was premised on the Bush Theory that they had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and it was too dangerous to wait until we had actual evidence that they had them (“we don’t want to wait until there is a mushroom cloud”), so we must do preventative bombing.
This war is premised on WMD 2.0, we wiped out their nuclear efforts 8 months ago, but in case they are even THINKING ABOUT trying again, we must bomb them out of the idea. More preventative bombing. We bomb the thoughts out of them.
We aren’t very good at initiating wars.
Yes. There's a theme here. WWII was "the good war" as Archie Bunker put it cause we didn't initiate it.
Vietnam? Nah.
It was the fault of those damn leftist woke communist hippies that tossed the tea overboard in Boston back in 1773.
If that never happened we'd have the country we we're supposed to have: only white male landowners could vote, women would have no rights, abortion would be outlawed, slavery would be legal, only white people from non-shithole countries could legally apply for citizenship, each year we'd have yet another record-breaking trade and budget surplus, and so, so, so much more.
Damn leftist woke communist hippies.
It would be great if they could watch this brief video about HR McMaster's book, "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam." He was Trump's National Security Advisor. He blames LVJ and his advisors for unclear and indecisive military planning. https://youtu.be/abbU9G8QWBo?si=uxHnV8hwN9hLvnkM
Thx, I’ll check that out.
I was always told the solution to our international problems is "bomb them back to the Stone Age."
Trump seems to be working on that project now.
Several big Trump supporters are making lots of money from planes and bombs in this war. That's true for the AI people, and especially true for the local oil people. Oil prices are going up, and they will stay up, long after the actual crisis has passed. Millions have doed so a few can make billions. This has happened before, often.
And the new talking point is that it's our patriotic duty to pay more to the oil companies.
Yeah.
That's the 'everyone's gonna feel a little pain' part, ain't it?
The rub is that no one knows for how long.
Can you imagine the outrage if a Democrat called for shared sacrifice?
Don Jr. and Eric are heavily invested in drone companies.
"an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before"
The only way this can go is worse. Eventally it gets bad enough for Donnie to get his dearest wish of ordering a nuclear strike.
" Since we have so many nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?" ( quote from DJT in 2016) Happy Friday, Mike! Sleep easy!
It's funny how much that sounds like Iran's own online propaganda, identifiable by its apocalyptic tone and frequent references to The Great Satan.
It does sound similar all right.
Sounds much like threats always made from Saddam and the leaders of Iran .
Like "bomb them back to the Stone Age" as Kate noted above, and McCain's favorite Beach Boys song, "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran."
Mike - well that and tax cuts for the 1%
…and getting rid of Obamacare. Bombs, tax cuts, getting rid of Obamacare and that’s it…
Yes, this fits with Trump-think. Double-down.
“Trump is playing with fire here, but this sort of Mad King threat has worked for him in the past and could work again: At least for the moment, the attacks on energy seem to have stopped.”
His mad king act could work in the short-term to stem some of the losses and possibly save $200 oil; however, no matter how this plays out, we’ve been exposed as a toothless tiger and the results will reduce the US to a marginal player in international affairs—because of our incompetence and stupidity.
Bottom line, we’ve lost EU, S. Korea and Japan, have finally gotten the memo; don’t expect the US to come to their aid if China invades Taiwan—We’ve moved forces and air defense systems from Japan and S.Korea to th Middle East.
Not to mention, we’ve reduced our ability to defend our allies by wasting almost 15% of our munitions in 11 days—3 years or more to resupply. In addition, the Iranian’s—who have been defeated (apparently), just shot an F-35 in the air and forcing it to make an emergency landing, taking it out of the military theater.
Bottom line, when you add it up, we will be in a remarkably weaker position in the world than anytime after before WW2. Let that sink in!…:)
People like Trump can only think of it in terms of power, but that will always get it wrong. Yes, we have the most powerful military but Iran is showing us the limits of that power as did Iraq and Afghanistan. Our super power after WW2 was not our military, but our ability to provide stability and the rule of law to a trading system that integrated our former enemies and lead all of us to a freer and more prosperous future. Yes, we did provide security as well, but that wasn’t the secret sauce which was our stability and reliability. An unreliable, chaotic US is one which is no longer useful to the Europeans or our Asian allies. Donald only thinks in terms what is useful to him, not realizing others make similar calculations.
Asymmetric warfare, ask the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80's or US in Vietnam in the 60's.
And the Brits in the War for Independence. Washington's strategy was to exhaust the enemy and British morale through a long-term war of attrition.
Well said.
Time for military recruits to do more push-ups!/s
Paging Champaign Pete!
or before WW2
Thank you..:)
Just the opposite of our position at the end of WWI: A debtor nation going in and the world's leading creditor nation at the end. On our way to being the global superpower.
Well said!…:)
And, we will looked at as a skunk. all alone
A competition in KY to see who is the biggest Trump suck-up is a depressing commentary on the psychosis of the Republican voter. Just rename the party the Trump party already. The only principle any of its voters hold at this point is "I believe what dear leader believes." It's a crazy state of affairs when 35% of the electorate voluntarily abandons all its critical faculties.
The Gabbard saga is fascinating, and all her present misery is well deserved. If it were 2021, when she was still nominally a Democrat, and Joe Biden did in Iran what Donald Trump is doing now, she would never shut up with invective and vituperation against Biden. Now that she's on the Trump admin payroll, she makes a mockery of any principles she professed to formerly hold, which just further confirms the GOP is the Trump party, and the only principle is loyalty to Trump. What did she ever really believe that made her so mad at Democrats she had to switch parties and torch the place on her way out?
It's why it's basically impossible to have any Republican on the political shows to offer a defense of MAGA, because they either don't believe anything or they will gladly say things they don't believe. You just end up platforming someone brimming with bad faith who has no compunction against lying to your audience.
Def an interesting tactic from Massie. He's not going to get back in Trump's good graces, but if he can downgrade his opponent's level of fealty to Deer Leader, he can probly get some MAGAs to stay home.
Yeah, I definitely understand why he's doing it, because it's really his only play. But man, it's shameful that this is how Republican voters have to be treated.
It’s shameful this is how Republican voters WANT to be treated.
As always, they lap it up. (cult)
This true in Florida where candidates for the state legislature, and some county offices, must establish their pro-Trump bona fides. Really very sad.
No idea why someone like her is so fond of Trump. It’s bizarre.
Cause she's an opportunist.
Same. Fetterman looks to me to be on a similar trajectory.
Oh please! Who let the dogs out, Donald? You got all excited for your little excursion and rubbed yourself too hard on the bottle and now the genie is out. No, you did not have to start this war in Iran and you should not have listened to Bibi’s whining. I did find it the height of hilarity yesterday when Netanyahu felt the need to clarify the US did not know about the pars field attack, and hadn’t made the US go to war for Israel. When the clarification provides not clarify.
On a more serious note The Guardian has been reporting the British teams at the negations with us and Iran felt the Iranians had offered what would have constituted a deal and was probably not their final offer meaning we could have pressed for more. The deal also apparently would have included the US being a partner in developing civilian nuclear energy in Iran at some point. So, no Donald, you did not have to start this war this war. If you had been more patient you probably could have had a big beautiful deal with Iran that may well have gotten the Norwegians attention and that Nobel Prize you so desire.
What? The great negotiator can't negotiate?
QED
I saw that Guardian article too. It looks like Witkof and Kushner weren't really very interested in an agreement, too busy on their other assignment. Why do we not read anything about the so called negotiations in the US media?
Trying to be generous to Witkoff and Kushner when maybe I shouldn’t be, but they aren’t qualified for the role so hard to say how seriously they took or did not take the negotiations — they don’t behave as people who are trained or have experience would. We should be having a candid conversation about those negotiations as it appears the Iranians did take them seriously, but that might require more discomfort than our media cares for.
Since they weren't trained or didn't have the experience but agreed to take on the job anyway, I don't let them off the hook.
True that!
This is why y'all should support The Guardian. It's independent news, like the Bulwark: https://support.theguardian.com. I pay $5/mo.
Trump thought he could wag the dog and get in and out of Iran just fast enough to deflect from the Epstein files while claiming another victory against the Iranian nuclear threat. He did not plan to stay for long, I'm sure he did not plan for the Straits of Hormuz to be blocked, nor for the Iranians to continue to keep it together and go on the offensive. No matter what he does, we need to continue to hit as hard as we can on decoding those Epstein files and his financial ties to Russia.
Well Republicans blocked the release of Treasury records on Epstein so not help there — of course none expected. Makes you wonder what is in them.
Thx for the Guardian tip. I'm supporting them with a small, monthly donation because they are independent media. Trump can't get to them.
I mis-read, thought you had stated Bibi's whirling, I'm gonna keep thinking that though
Well Bibi’s legal issues do have him twisting in the breeze.
that reply was for Keith W
When my brother and sister told me in 2024 that they were going to vote for Trump, I was flabbergasted when they explained it was because they admired his "leadership" skills. I pointed back to the last year of his first presidency and said he had failed the leadership test on two levels: a national emergency (Covid) and a personal one (losing the election). I did not sway their opinion and I dreaded what could happen if he were re-elected and faced an emergency once again.
Now we know, and, like his response to Covid, it's as muddle-minded as we could have expected, with different demands and plans trotted out almost daily. At some point, especially if he begins to think he's losing the war, things will become as desperate as his reaction to his defeat by Joe Biden. Add in the political loss expected in the midterms, and there's no desperate action he will not take.
We've been here before.
And I'm guessing your brother and sister are still with him, right?
right . . . 'there's no desperate action he will not take' (which means he's very likely to nuke Iran--I don't think that is hyperbole; I wish I did.)
Re: "A new Politico poll finds that only 12 percent of 2024 Trump voters oppose the war in Iran so far."
And...
Re: "He’s fighting just to get back to the levels of support he had this time last year as the midterms loom and his coalition crashes down around him."
Okay, so which is it? Only 12% of the people who voted for him oppose the war. That means 88% are still with him on it. But, at the same time, his coalition is crashing down around him? I'm sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. Which is it?
And I keep reading that oil prices are "skyrocketing," but I look at global crude oil prices and they're hovering just below $100/bbl every day, which means they're a LOT higher than they were before the war, but seem to have reached a plateau.
My working assumption is that there is no level of personal financial ruin that will dissuade Trump voters from their support. They can lose their businesses, farms, healthcare, health, life savings, personal relationships, literally everything that makes life worth living and STILL support him because to do otherwise would mean admitting they made a mistake.
Sometimes I think I might be wrong about that, but then, the next day, the hypothesis seems to be proved. This is one of those days. Eighty-eight percent of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 are with him on this war which has increased their gas prices, a thing of great importance to them. It has also involved us in another Mideast war, another thing they said they cared about and Trump said he would not do. There is just nothing that will blast these people out of their Trump bubble.
"My working assumption is that there is no level of personal financial ruin that will dissuade Trump voters from their support. They can lose their businesses, farms, healthcare, health, life savings, personal relationships, literally everything that makes life worth living and STILL support him because to do otherwise would mean admitting they made a mistake." You've aptly described the cult mentality that is shared by most Trump supporters.
My MAGA friends on Facebook (mostly in rural America) after their initial enthusiasm have gone strangely silent. If asked they probably all would say they support. But their seeming unwillingness to express that support in the antisocial media may show a degree of ambivalence about it all. This is in direct contrast to their enthusiastic defense of the entire mass deportation agenda and the "one and done" kidnapping of Maduro which they all thought was brilliant. This about rationalizing after the fact rather than believing in advance. By this time Trump voters are expert a delusional rationalization.
I liken their devotion to T to their Christianity. They believe that Jesus is the one and only son of God. What Jesus said and taught is irrelevant to their belief, it's only about that one thing, to which they attach anything they like. T is their earth-bound savior, what he says and does is irrelevant. It's T's singular status as earthly savior, and such a status requires unquestioning devotion.
Yep. Well put, Alondra.
Thx for the on the ground reporting. Good to know.
It's so demoralizing. You're quite right; despite the commentary about a fracturing coalition, the data don't bear it out. When 88% support him doing the exact opposite of why they voted for him, then a significant portion of this country is utterly lost. When a Trump-Iran war gets 88-12 approval from the same voters who would have given a Biden-Iran war 0-100 approval, it feels like everything we're doing here in the pro-democracy coalition is pointless.
"He's better than a Dem" and the Dems are lower than worm sweat. That's Trump's bar to clear and he's graded on a curve by MAGAs.
That being said...this cultish devotion doesn't seem to translate down ballot...THANKFULLY!
Cult
normally my brother talks about fuel prices at every town on his way to see me, like every single drive, NOW< crickets
Well said.
Truly the only winners in this war are Putin and Xi as they gleefully watch the US waste all our offensive ammunition on a country that couldn't do us any harm in the first place. Putin's oil and Natural gas are safe, China is unaffected by Iran's blocking the Strait. This could not be any better for Russia if Putin had designed it himself, then maybe he did.
If Qatar really wants to strike a blow at the US to thank us for the war, they can demand their jet back. 😀
Mike - are you sure they’d want it back? You know where that thing has been? 🤭
Wow, I didn't need that mental image. 😀
The underlying incentives here are why I thought Trump would TACO on Iran. His family is now tightly linked to the Gulf States economic success, but the longer the war goes on the more longterm damage that does to places like Qatar and the UAE. If they are not seen as islands of stability, then who will want to do business of live there. This war may permanently damage their economic future. The other reason was that a deal with Iran would have unlocked an economic bonanza for the Gulf Stares with business deals in Iran thereby further enriching the Trump family who I am sure would have gotten a cut from any such deal. He seems intent on killing his own family goose with this war.
It's my understanding that MBS of Saudi Arabia is cheering the war on. He's enjoying the higher prices. When Trump says "we" do better when the price of oil is high, he doesn't mean the general public.
Pretty sure the Qataris and the UAE are not so happy. GCC unity is being tested as is the Abraham Accords.
"Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets" *Damn Yankees
Trump never talks about the general public benefiting, but this war does seem to damage his families longterm prospects.
And get told it's been refurbished and is now available for about five trillion dollars.
Hah!
Epstein files.
Massie seems to have forgotten all about them to get re-elected. I wish I was surprised.
Here's the thing: Trump doesn't determine when this war ends. Iran does.
You have the watch, but we have the time.
Good one!
Like Afghanistan