Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is

[ondma]

As VRAM said above, I think the majority of Trump supporters know exactly who he is, although they might not admit it publicly. They either sympathize with his views, or are willing to overlook them as long as he pushes their particular agenda, i.e. abortion, open borders, cut taxes, help business at all costs, gun control. I think where the conservative media has had a bigger effect is in demonizing democrats: they will take your guns, abolish the police, abolish your religious freedom, allow your cities to burn, etc.

 

[compuwiz1]

As VRAM said above, I think the majority of Trump supporters know exactly who he is, although they might not admit it publicly. They either sympathize with his views, or are willing to overlook them as long as he pushes their particular agenda, i.e. abortion, open borders, cut taxes, help business at all costs, gun control. I think where the conservative media has had a bigger effect is in demonizing democrats: they will take your guns, abolish the police, abolish your religious freedom, allow your cities to burn, etc.

Lot of truth in your post. I don't vote for the personality that is Trump, as I don't like Trump's personality. I vote against the things I am opposed to, and the things I am in favor of, and Trump has the platform and policy I am most interested in.
A lot of the things Trump has said that some people find so offensive are the exact same things Clinton and Obama have said in the past, with regard to law and order, border control, illegal immigrants, etc. The hypocrisy comes about when suddenly the left decides to hate on Trump's policies, even though Democrats, such as I mentioned, supported all that in the past. It's hated simply for having an "R" in front of the name of the one proposing policy. How about we just be Americans and start supporting policy again that takes care of our country and puts us first?

 

[Veliko]

Lot of truth in your post. I don't vote for the personality that is Trump, as I don't like Trump's personality. I vote against the things I am opposed to, and the things I am in favor of, and Trump has the platform and policy I am most interested in.
A lot of the things Trump has said that some people find so offensive are the exact same things Clinton and Obama have said in the past, with regard to law and order, border control, illegal immigrants, etc. The hypocrisy comes about when suddenly the left decides to hate on Trump's policies, even though Democrats, such as I mentioned, supported all that in the past. It's hated simply for having an "R" in front of the name of the one proposing policy. How about we just be Americans and start supporting policy again that takes care of our country and puts us first?

Trump doesn't have a platform or a policy that doesn't extend beyond what is good for Trump.

He is a man who is so openly venal, vain, corrupt, and so clearly unfit for office that only a gullible fool would vote for him.

 

[Moonbeam]

If you can figure out why his supporters can't admit who he really is, you will definitely be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize for mental health.

I agree that conservative media serves the function and purpose you describe. I disagree that this is the "only" thing it does. You can't sit there day after day, year after year, and listen to propaganda which over-amplifies the worst ideas and behavior of liberals, and tells outright lies in order to demonize them, and not increase your level of antipathy.

These people already had a cultural antipathy towards liberals or they wouldn't have listened in the first place. But there are degrees of it, and given that they seem to literally believe what they're being told, it's nigh impossible that the degree of it has not directly increased as a result. It's like introducing a toxin into your system in low doses every day over a long period of time. It just builds and builds and the affects on your body (or in this case, your mind) just get worse and worse over time.

Ishtar be that the constant fear stimulation caused the right amygdala to grow. That’s my Theory anyway and what I might try to investigate if I were a doctoral candidate, which I have no interest in becoming.

 

[WelshBloke]

Lot of truth in your post. I don't vote for the personality that is Trump, as I don't like Trump's personality. I vote against the things I am opposed to, and the things I am in favor of, and Trump has the platform and policy I am most interested in.
A lot of the things Trump has said that some people find so offensive are the exact same things Clinton and Obama have said in the past, with regard to law and order, border control, illegal immigrants, etc. The hypocrisy comes about when suddenly the left decides to hate on Trump's policies, even though Democrats, such as I mentioned, supported all that in the past. It's hated simply for having an "R" in front of the name of the one proposing policy. How about we just be Americans and start supporting policy again that takes care of our country and puts us first?

Trump is fucking useless as a politician though, even if you agree with the stuff he says he doesn't manage to actually achieve anything meaningful.
Your country is literally in flames and it's down to his abysmal ability as a politician.

 

[Moonbeam]

Lot of truth in your post. I don't vote for the personality that is Trump, as I don't like Trump's personality. I vote against the things I am opposed to, and the things I am in favor of, and Trump has the platform and policy I am most interested in.
A lot of the things Trump has said that some people find so offensive are the exact same things Clinton and Obama have said in the past, with regard to law and order, border control, illegal immigrants, etc. The hypocrisy comes about when suddenly the left decides to hate on Trump's policies, even though Democrats, such as I mentioned, supported all that in the past. It's hated simply for having an "R" in front of the name of the one proposing policy. How about we just be Americans and start supporting policy again that takes care of our country and puts us first?

You are exactly what we have been describing, a person so bent on sticking it to your projected self, the hatred for yourself you project on Democrats, that the immensity of the immorality of your actions have lost all ability to shame you. You are quite happy to be disgusting because are what you despise and despise that fact so much you would rather be despicable than see it. And what a total waste. You are only despicable because that is what we become when we believe we are worthless. You aren’t worthless. You were created in the image of God. Have a little backbone, for Christ’s sake. Everybody else carries that feeling around. Buck up, Butter Cup. Don’t be such a Nancy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Trump is fucking useless as a politician though, even if you agree with the stuff he says he doesn't manage to actually achieve anything meaningful.
Your country is literally in flames and it's down to his abysmal ability as a politician.

Can’t be helped. He got all jacked up as a child swallowing the horse shit morality he was told he had to believe if he wanted to prevent his life from being a permanent home living hell. He had to break then, he just doesn’t have to now. He is deaf so he doesn’t have to hear this.

 

[MrSquished]

They can't admit who he is because he is them. He validates the trash within them with his unapologetic behavior. Trump supporters are trash. Well most of his base is. The rest are just opportunistic and don't mind using the trash for their own means, usually to make and hold onto as much wealth as possible while letting as little of it get to everyone else.

 

[shortylickens]

The Atlantic has a limited number of views per month.

To understand the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now, it helps to understand the predicate embraced by many Trump supporters: If Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the presidency, America dies.

During last week’s Republican National Convention, speaker after speaker insisted that life under a Biden presidency would be dystopian. Charlie Kirk, the young Trump acolyte who opened the proceedings, declared, “I am here tonight to tell you—to warn you—that this election is a decision between preserving America as we know it and eliminating everything that we love.” President Trump, who closed the proceedings, said, “Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens. And this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.” And in between Americans were told that Democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door” and that they “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear.”

“They’re not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether,” a St. Louis couple who had brandished weapons against demonstrators outside their home, told viewers. “Make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

One does not have to be a champion of the Democratic Party to know this chthonic portrait is absurd. But it is also essential, because it allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And “anything” turns out to be quite a lot.

In just the past two weeks, the president has praised supporters of the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon, which contends, as The Guardian recently summarized it, that “a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.” Trump touted a conspiracy theory that the national death toll from COVID-19 is about 9,000, a fraction of the official figure of nearly 185,000; promoted a program on the One America News Network accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Trump’s downfall; encouraged his own supporters to commit voter fraud; and claimed Biden is controlled by “people that are in the dark shadows” who are wearing “dark uniforms.”

Trump believes his own government is conspiring to delay a COVID-19 vaccine until after the election. He retweeted a message from the actor James Woods saying New York Governor Andrew Cuomo “should be in jail” and another from an account accusing the Portland, Oregon, mayor of “committing war crimes.” The president is “inciting violence,” in the words of Maryland’s Republican Governor, Larry Hogan. Trump defended 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a supporter who is charged with first-degree homicide; and stated that if he loses the election in November it would be because it was “rigged.” At the same time, the second-ranking House Republican, among other of the president’s supporters, has shared several manipulated videos in an effort to damage Biden.

This is just the latest installment in a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance. And yet, for tens of millions of Trump’s supporters, none of it matters. None of it even breaks through. At this point, it appears, Donald Trump really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his voters.

Franklin Foer: How Donald Trump is killing politics

This phenomenon has no shortage of explanations, but perhaps the most convincing is the terror the president’s backers feel. Time and again, I’ve had conversations with Trump supporters who believe the president is all that stands between them and cultural revolution. Trump and his advisers know it, which is why the through line of the RNC was portraying Joe Biden as a Jacobin.

Republicans chose that theme despite the fact that during his almost 50 years in politics, Biden hasn’t left any discernible ideological imprint on either the nation or his own party. Indeed, Biden is notable for his success over the course of his political career in forging alliances with many Republicans. I worked at the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the early 1990s when William Bennett was its director and George H. W. Bush was president. Biden was then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee; he and his staff were supportive of our work, and not in the least ideological. There will be no remaking of the calendar if Joe Biden becomes president.

Still, in the minds of Trump’s supporters lingers the belief that a Biden presidency would usher in a reign of terror. Many of them simply have to believe that. Justifying their fealty to a man who is so obviously a moral wreck requires them to turn Joe Biden and the Democratic Party into an existential threat. The narrative is set; the actual identity of the nominee is almost incidental.

A powerful tribal identity bonds the president to his supporters. As Amy Chua, the author of Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, has argued, the tribal instinct is not just to belong, but also to exclude and to attack. “When groups feel threatened,” Chua writes, “they retreat into tribalism. They close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.”

That works both ways. Fear strengthens tribalistic instincts, and tribalistic instincts amplify fear. Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat. In the presence of such an enemy, members of tribal groups look outward rather than inward, at others and never at themselves or their own kind.

The danger of this mindset—in which the means, however unethical, justify the ends of survival—is obvious. And so in this case, Trump supporters will tolerate everything he does, from making hush-money payments to porn stars and engaging in sexually predatory behavior, to inviting America’s adversaries to intervene in our elections, to pressuring American allies to dig up dirt on the president’s opponent, to cozying up to some of the worst dictators in the world, to peddling crazed conspiracy theories, to mishandling a pandemic at the cost of untold lives, to countless other ethical and governing transgressions. Trump is given carte blanche by his supporters because they perceive him as their protector, transforming his ruthlessness from a vice into a virtue.

Read: Donald Trump and the politics of fear

In my experience, if Trump supporters are asked to turn their gaze away from their perceived opponents, and instead to focus and reflect on him and on his failures, they respond in a couple of consistent ways. Many shift the topic immediately back to Democrats, because offering a vigorous moral defense of Donald Trump isn’t an easy task. It’s like asking people to stare directly into the sun; they might do it for an instant, but then they look away. But if you do succeed in keeping the topic on Trump, they often twist themselves into knots in order to defend him, and in some cases they simply deny reality.

“Motivation conditions cognition,” Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, wisely told me. Very few Trump supporters I know are able to offer an honest appraisal of the man. To do so creates too much cognitive dissonance.

That they are defending a person who is fundamentally malicious, even if he makes judicial appointments of which they approve, is too painful for them to admit. They are similarly unable to admit they are defending an ethic that is at odds with what they have long championed. They have accepted, excused, and applauded Trump’s behavior and tactics, allowing his ends to justify his means. In important respects, this is antithetical to a virtue ethic. So once again, it’s easier for them to look away or engage in self-deception; to convince themselves that Donald Trump is not who he so clearly is.

These reactions aren’t confined to Trump supporters; people across the political spectrum struggle with confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, in giving too much benefit of the doubt to those with whom we agree and judging too harshly and unfairly those with whom we disagree. That is part of the human condition. The degree to which Democrats, including feminists, overlooked or accepted Bill Clinton’s sexually predatory behavior—including his campaign’s effort to smear his accusers and its use of a private investigator to destroy Gennifer Flowers’s reputation “beyond all recognition”—is an illustration of this. So Flowers was branded a “bimbo” and a “pathological liar,” even though Clinton later, under oath, admitted to having an affair with her.

"If you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find,” James Carville said in response to Paula Jones’s claim that Clinton sexually harassed her. In defending President Clinton against the charges of sexual harassment made by Kathleen Willey, who accused Clinton of groping her without her consent, Gloria Steinem wrote, “The truth is that even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.” And Nina Burleigh, who covered the White House for Time magazine, said, “I’d be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.” So Democrats should be careful about looking down at others for accommodating themselves to unsavory and even repulsive characters for the sake of partisanship.

But what’s different in this case is that Trump, because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of “negative partisanship,” the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent. As the conservative writer David French has put it, with Donald Trump and his supporters we are seeing “negative partisanship in its near-pure form, and it’s the best way to explain Trump’s current appeal to the Republican party.” His ideology is almost entirely beside the point, according to French: “His identity matters more, and his identity is clear—the Republican champion against the hated Democratic foe.”

Tom Nichols: Donald Trump, the most unmanly president

I know plenty of Trump supporters, and I know many of them to be people of integrity in important areas of their lives. Indeed, some are friends I cherish. But if there is a line Donald Trump could cross that would forfeit the loyalty of his core supporters—including, and in some respects especially, white evangelical Christians—I can’t imagine what it would be. And that is a rather depressing thing to admit.

Polarization and political tribalism are not new to America; fear and hatred for our fellow citizens have been increasing for decades. We’ve had plenty of presidents who have failed us, in ways large and small. But this moment is different because Donald Trump is different, and because Donald Trump is president. His relentless assault on truth and the institutions of democracy—his provocations and abuse of power, his psychological instability and his emotional volatility, his delusions and his incompetence—are unlike anything we’ve seen before. He needs to be stopped. And his supporters can’t say, as they did in 2016, that they just didn’t know. Now we know. It’s not too late—it’s never too late—to do the right thing.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

 

[shortylickens]

Oh yeah, my commentary.

Tribalism in the modern world has been around a long time, the real problem here is its much worse and its actually leading to violence in the streets. Guys who hump the flag and masturbate their guns should be able to see that black Americans have been treated like garbage for a long time and are just exercising their constitutional right to stand up to an oppressive government.
But they dont see that because the almighty Donald tells them not to see it. Thats the most glaring blindness they exhibit but theres even more. Voting rights, schools, hospitals, public safety, a lot of issues seem to be getting warped beyond recognition thanks to Donald and his party gaslighting their own voters and Americans as a whole.

 

[shortylickens]

Yeah it's a good article. It's leaving something out though. Conservatives didn't all the sudden start thinking democrats were Satan because one day Trump stepped up to a podium and said so. They have been conditioned by decades of conservative media to believe this. Trump stepped in and used fear based propaganda to a crowd which was already primed to imbibe it because they had already been imbibing it for years.

Yup. Donald is actually one of the people brainwashed by Fox and the other groups, he did not start it, he came on it later in his life.
Earlier was more moderate and generally level headed with big issues. He occasionally ran his mouth out of ignorance, like when the Central Park Five were arrested. But he never called for the destruction of half the country just cuz it fit his agenda.

 

[Moonbeam]

They can't admit who he is because he is them. He validates the trash within them with his unapologetic behavior. Trump supporters are trash. Well most of his base is. The rest are just opportunistic and don't mind using the trash for their own means, usually to make and hold onto as much wealth as possible while letting as little of it get to everyone else.

Not trash. Made to feel so much like trash that denial become absolute as does the need to punish somebody for their unmitigated unconscious suffering. It’s self destruction turned inside out. Turn the world to shit for payback. Kill the animals, chop down the forests, fill the sky’s with pollution, end my suffering by stabbing yourself in the back with your left hand as we genuflect with the other.

 

[Jaskalas]

Hatred of others is just another way of saying conservative.

Yes, though under that definition there are many conservative like folk who happen to vote Democrat. Wouldn't you agree @nickqt ?

 

[ivwshane]

Trump doesn't have a platform or a policy that doesn't extend beyond what is good for Trump.

He is a man who is so openly venal, vain, corrupt, and so clearly unfit for office that only a gullible fool would vote for him.

Yeah and that’s exactly what compuwiz supports!

 

[Jhhnn]

Lot of truth in your post. I don't vote for the personality that is Trump, as I don't like Trump's personality. I vote against the things I am opposed to, and the things I am in favor of, and Trump has the platform and policy I am most interested in.
A lot of the things Trump has said that some people find so offensive are the exact same things Clinton and Obama have said in the past, with regard to law and order, border control, illegal immigrants, etc. The hypocrisy comes about when suddenly the left decides to hate on Trump's policies, even though Democrats, such as I mentioned, supported all that in the past. It's hated simply for having an "R" in front of the name of the one proposing policy. How about we just be Americans and start supporting policy again that takes care of our country and puts us first?

You know full well that Trump lies about literally everything, but not to you because it just feels so gosh darned good to believe him. It's like crack for conservatives.

 

[shortylickens]

Donald hasn't actually kept any of his campaign promises except the tax cut. And the tax cut was not a good thing. It made life much easier for billionaires and multi-millionaires, and the funds lost will make life much harder for everyone else.
So even if you you voted strictly on issues and ignored all the other nonsense, he's still a failure as a president. Then you have the other things which are debatable, like his horrifically racist tenure which arguably encouraged people like nazis, klansmen, and brain damaged incels to attack liberals and people of color all over the nation. And his piss poor handling of major problems like a pandemic which debatably got 200 thousand people killed unnecessarily.