From The Saturday Afternoon Post:
I recently had pizza with an old friend I had not seen for a long time who is a fanatic Trump supporter. Recently retired, he had spent the majority of his adult life working in, and benefiting from, union jobs. He has unfortunately fallen prey to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and far-right Christian evangelicals. By allowing these groups to influence his thinking, he has become a low-information voter who believes myths and old, untrue stereotypes – a perfect foil for ignoramuses like Trump to exploit as they do. This poor guy says he likes Trump because he gives him credit for our strong economy – completely ignoring the fact that our current economic prosperity was begun in Barack Obama’s presidency. Because he hates Obama, he refuses to concede that it has been largely Obama’s doing and that Trump is coasting along taking undue credit for it. He also says that Trump has reached out to foreign dictators like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, and cites that as good, conveniently misunderstanding how Trump has been manipulated by them. He also supports Trump’s anti-immigrant overtones, and fully believes Trump’s nonsense about a massive foreign invasion from below our borders.
Another woman I know who is a strong Trump supporter says she supports him due to his pro-life positions. As a one-issue voter, she overlooks the fact that, for many years, Trump was strongly pro-choice, until it dawned on him that he would get tons of support from conservative voters if he would abandon the pro-choice people, so he did. Both of these examples are good people, but both are sorely mistaken when it comes to their support for Trump. Both believe what they want to believe and ignore the negative facts about him. They both believe in the Trumpian concept of “fake news”, even though Trump and his crew have manipulated the media to such an extent that it is they, and NOT the media, who have actively been engaged in spreading “fake news”