Anatomy Of A Trump Supporter

Who are these fellow Americans of ours who still support Trump? Are they really all addicted to prescription drugs? Are they all racists? Are they all just terminally stupid? I don't know many personally-- I admit it-- and the ones I do know are indeed incredibly stupid and willfully ignorant, racist and addicted to prescription drugs. But I was interested enough in knowing there are other Trump supporters out there who aren't that I read a piece by David Smith in The Guardian based on interviews with 9 Trumpists last week at the noisy little Nazi rally in Phoenix. (Yeah, I know-- Señor Trumpanzee claimed there were 15,000, but that was the Bernie rally in the same building a year ago; Trump's pathetic little rally, according to the Phoenix Fire Department, drew less than 4,200, many of whom left after Trump started boring them with his pointless and endless attacks on CNN.)

The first person they interviewed was a crackpot Arizona state senator, Sylvia Allen, a Mormon from Snowflake (really) who advocates making church attendance in the U.S. mandatory (really). She told The Guardian "Trump is a breath of fresh air. He’s totally not a political person. He’s a businessman: he’s anti-left, he’s anti-PC, he’s anti-stupid. He just wants to go in and make the best deal for Americans that he can." I don't know what drugs she takes or how seriously addicted she is but...

Of course he’s not racist. That’s a label people want to put on someone when they don’t agree how to solve a problem. You don’t see the issue, so you attack. That’s the way the left has operated in our country very effectively.

Both sides were wrong in Charlottesville. Everyone has a right to peacefully protest under the first amendment but this was a form of domestic terrorism: the left started it and the white supremacists helped it explode. Trump was trying to say Nazism and Marxism are on the same spectrum: they want to control how you think, how you live.

I support a border wall. We absolutely have the right as a society to protect our safety as a country. We also need to reform our legal immigration process.

Middle America, the middle class, the blue-collar workers, the small-business owners like hearing from our president, but the media in our country is leftist. They can’t get the real story. The media has lost all integrity: they’re a disgrace. They’ve sold their souls for political gain. People want a president who is not politically correct, who will say it like it is and will not do it because he wants to get elected.

Sylvia Allen is 70 and may have gotten too much sun over the decades. Jillian Henry is a 19 year old biology student who drove four and a half hours from California to attend the Phoenix rally. She admits she voted for Trump because "he was the best candidate running. I agreed with him on border protection and didn’t want someone being investigated by the FBI sitting in our president’s seat [meaning Hillary, presumably]. He’s doing pretty good so far. Healthcare is Congress’s fault mainly, because they can’t decide what they want and need to figure it out. I don’t think he’s a racist. I think if they’re calling him a racist, they may be racist. The border wall is a good plan. We need to protect America. If we’re not safe, why should we be OK with that? I think he is right to criticise the media and fake news. There are big problems with the media stirring up things that are not there and fake interpretations all around. The thing with tweeting is it’s a great way to keep the people involved. People didn’t have a problem with Roosevelt doing it on the radio and they shouldn’t have a problem with Trump doing it on Twitter."

The next one was another 70 year old, Patricia Morgan, and another crackpot. She came all the way from Brooklyn for the Nazi rally. She sure seems like a nut and very much wants the country to move backwards. Real sad case: "I don’t think he’s a racist. I think if they’re calling him a racist, they may be racist.

The border wall is a good plan. We need to protect America. If we’re not safe, why should we be OK with that? I think he is right to criticise the media and fake news. There are big problems with the media stirring up things that are not there and fake interpretations all around. The thing with tweeting is it’s a great way to keep the people involved. People didn’t have a problem with Roosevelt doing it on the radio and they shouldn’t have a problem with Trump doing it on Twitter."

She thinks McCain should switch parties and become a Democrat. She also buys into the "both sides" idea Trump pushes to his true believers and into the nonsense about how not a racist he is and has always not been. "He used to," she asserted,"get awards from some of the black organisations because he would go in and help them." And she loves the circus atmosphere Trump uses to entertain and give some verve to the shabby lives of imbeciles like her: "The media are very prejudiced against him. I don’t think the media are fair: they have their own agenda. It’s good when he tweets and tells us what’s going on."



What about the men? Oh, there were men too, don't worry. Bob Neilssen a former 63 year old realtor "lost everything but the car when the housing market crashed and his wife, now 76, fell ill with Alzheimer’s. He now cares for her and sleeps on an air mattress at the home of a 94-year-old friend who also lost his wife to Alzheimer’s; both men live off Social Security. Apparently neither has the brain capacity to realize they would die in the street of starvation if the Republicans got there way. In his world, Trump's not a racist and "both sides " were to blame for Charlottesville. Where do you think he got this? "The KKK had the legal right to express their opposition and they got a permit and everything would have been fine except that counter-protesters came with baseball bats and rocks. It’s not the KKK that started it. If they’d just let them kick around in the streets, that would have been it. Paid protesters started it and the media does not want that narrative to be told."

I voted for him because it was an obvious choice. Hillary Clinton had decades of foul play and illegal acts, and she was attached to Bill Clinton, who had decades of foul play and illegal acts. I’ve got nothing good to say about either of them.

The American people are sick and tired of a namby-pamby politician who is politically correct. Want a businessman who can make decisions. Best leave if it hurts your feelings. I want Trump to continue to call it like it is. I would vote for him if he quit the Republicans and started his own party.

I think Trump is doing as well as he possibly can considering all the foot-dragging and whining and non-belief in his election, with the media doing all it can to delegitimise him. The stock market has confidence in him and unemployment has plummeted.

I agree with him about a border wall. Immigration needs to be under control. We have to know and approve who’s going in and who’s coming out. If you have no border, you have no country. We don’t have a problem with Canada.

I want [Arizona senators] Jeff Flake and John McCain gone as soon as we have the next vote. Both are anti-Trump and are trying to sabotage Trump at all costs. I’ve been disappointed with McCain for decades. I admire his military service but being a good soldier does not make you a good politician. This vote on healthcare was just a slap in the face to Trump.

The media has been distorting the truth for decades. They’re so leftwing. If you said the glass was half full, they’d call you a Nazi and say it’s half empty. Now they don’t make sense any more and CNN is fake news. This Russia thing is made up: they don’t have a shred of evidence after a year.

As you can see from the polling question above, a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Trump handled Charlottesville-- 53-36%. But among self-described Trump voters, approval is huge... 78% and only 14% are in synch with American values and most Americans. This is classic, from a 46 year old white guy The Guardian interviewed in Phoenix: "Trump is absolutely not a racist. I tend to agree with what he said about Charlottesville." And here was his misinformed version of what happened there: "If I recall correctly, one side has a permit to be there legally while the other tore a statue down illegally." And this is pretty typical-- and uninformed-- among Trumpists too: "He’s a businessman and the economy needed him."

Another Trump supporter was Brad Pontious, 66, who lost the right hemisphere of his brain to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. He became a quality engineer for Boeing and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2008, had a stroke in 2013, uses a wheelchair and lives with his wife, April, 50. He sounds like all the rest of them: "I voted for him because I was tired of politicians. He spoke to me on a personal level, not a political level... I don’t believe he’s racist."



And the last guy, a 19 year old student, 50% black, 50% Japanese, 100% confused: "I voted for him because of diversity. He actually practices diversity unlike liberals, who don’t practice diversity. Obama had this whole country thinking about skin colour. Trump doesn’t look at skin colour. He doesn’t label anyone who’s non-white a minority, just people. Skin colour is colour, not culture. His cabinet is nothing to do with skin colour: they’re right for the job."

Both sides in Charlottesville are bad. He’s absolutely right. The Antifa [anti-fascist groups] are the equivalent of the KKK and both were responsible. Antifa is the KKK, just without the history. The Confederate flag is not racist: only 5% of slave owners had the Confederate flag; the US flag is more racist. Do you think I’d be that stupid to vote for an actual racist to be in office?

CNN and MSNBC are complete bullshit. They label the Antifa as peaceful protesters.

Thirty other countries have a wall to protect against illegal immigration but is the only one that gets called racist.

My dad and family are all Democratic except my grandfather. They’ve tried to change my mind but it doesn’t make sense to me what they say.

A tweet this weekend from the penultimate Trumpist

The RNC felt compelled to make it clear that-- no matter what Trump and his die-hard lunatics like the ones interviewed by The Guardian think-- the Republican Party condemns Nazis and the KKK, underscoring "the level of concern within the party over Trump’s comments on the protests and the impact they could have on the party heading into the 2018 midterm election."

The resolution passed unanimously. It reads: "the racist beliefs of Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and other like-minded groups are completely inconsistent with the Republican Party’s platform" and "the view that the color of one’s skin determines or should determine one’s standing, rights, opportunities, or duties to others is not consistent with the philosophy of the Republican Party... The racist beliefs of the Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and others are repulsive, evil, and have no fruitful place in the United States." Trump supporters don't care what the RNC thinks, says or resolves. As long as Trump sends purposeful mixed messages on racism and the alt-right and keeps doing things like pardoning Joe Arpaio, they'll keep loving him-- "they" meaning the ignorant, prescription drug addicted racist base.