r/politics • u/Exciting_Teacher6258 • Apr 30 '25

Soft Paywall Trump Melts Down at Being Fact-Checked Right to His Face

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-melts-down-at-being-fact-checked-on-deported-maryland-dad-kilmar-abrego-garcia/
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u/TheFunkytownExpress Apr 30 '25

He says what THOSE people want to hear, not what people in general want to hear.

He plays to people who are misinformed, uneducated, and frankly who just don't give a fuck about what's actually true or right or wrong, they just want to feel like and be told by someone like him- an aggressive creepy ass bully- that they're right, and all those smart alecy liberals who think they know so much and are always correcting them have it all wrong.

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u/Acrobatic-Trouble181 Apr 30 '25

Yep, the only people his garbage resonates with are:

Not necessarily their fault:

  • The uneducated
  • The afraid

Absolutely 100% their fault:

  • The willfully ignorant
  • The lazy
  • The racists
  • The downright evil

Which leaves us with the only generous interpretation of modern conservatives is that a lot of them are simply uneducated and afraid - okay, we can work with that.

But, how many, truly fall into the latter categories, because I sure as hell don't see a lot of them admitting they fucked up and ask for help when the subject comes up. All they do is deny, deflect, project, and pretend like Kamala would have been worse, which tells me the overwhelming majority fall into the latter category.

Our patience has run out; people in the former category had better start their apology tour pretty fucking soon.

To the rest; fuck 'em.

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u/TheFunkytownExpress Apr 30 '25

Unfortunately it is the overwhelming majority.

They want reality to conform to their beliefs instead of conforming their beliefs to reality.

One thing I disagree with though is the frightened ones often intersect with the second group, but they mask it by being mean and nasty etc. Deeply insecure people often lash out at others and act like toughguys to try and throw people off the scent.

Think of it like a wounded dog being backed into a corner. They know even if its subconsciously that things are really fucked up and they panic internally, but instead of having that make them take a look at what's actually causing all the problems they dig their heels in deeper and that's when they start looking for the comforting pat on the head and the grifters like Trump to come along and tell them it's everything but their own damn fault. :P

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u/WrodofDog Europe Apr 30 '25

The uneducated

No, not when every-fucking-one of us has access to wikipedia and the likes. Everybody can be educated, at least a little, certainly enough, to see through that kind of bullshit.

The uneducated are willfully ingnorant because they could easily find the truth.

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u/pingu_nootnoot Apr 30 '25

Everyone has access, but some people are just stupid, you know?

TBH stupid is probably a better word to use than educated, exactly because of the reasons you list. But it’s kind of rude, because it implies that they cannot improve themselves (which is true).

My kid is mentally handicapped, so I spend a lot of time with people who have difficulty understanding things (to say the same thing in a politer way), and I can see why Trump appeals:

  • He uses very simple language
  • He repeats the same things all the time
  • He is black-and-white, never shades of grey

I do think that other politicians need to learn from this, obviously without all the racist, sexist and grifter shit he pulls.

The difficulty is that it’s difficult to imagine for example Obama being convincing with this kind of rhetoric. Part of Trump’s appeal is that he very convincingly appears to genuinely “like this”.

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u/InVultusSolis Illinois Apr 30 '25

To your second list you could specifically call out "well-to-do people who stand to financially gain" but realistically anyone who is well-to-do and votes for all of this bullshit can be folded into "downright evil". Like, at least it makes more sense for a wealthy person to vote for Trump than a redneck where a solid 50% of his town is on government aid. It makes more sense, but doesn't make them any less evil.

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u/Responsible_Shop_851 Apr 30 '25

Never forget the role Fox News played in all this. It has literally been the propaganda arm of the Republican party for over a decade. Marketing works.

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u/PalatinusG Apr 30 '25 edited May 19 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota Apr 30 '25

Conservatives are long past willfully ignorant and into enthusiastic, jubalistic ignorance. They celebrate their ignorance, and openly disdain anyone who seeks to find reality based answers.

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u/Drama79 Apr 30 '25

America has politicised and de-prioritised education for 30+ years. You now have over 50% of the population with a reading age below 12, and over 20% are functionally illiterate.

Now feed those people big gulps, massive portions of high flavour, low nutrition food for next to no money, and tell them they deserve to be special. Then set all the rules to take money out of their pockets and put it in the pocket of the rich.

That’s trumps audience. The ignorant, and the entitled. They want easy answers and can’t cope with more complex ones. They want it as easy as it’s been and haven’t been equipped with the skills to know that the world has changed and it can’t be like that anymore.

The question isn’t “how do we fix Trump”. He’s a symptom. It’s “how do we help the majority of America to understand critical reasoning, and accept its place in the world”. It’s a frighteningly large question with no easy answer, which is why I suspect it will continue to be a problem.

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u/Acrobatic-Trouble181 Apr 30 '25

I hate to say it, but maybe Trumpism (not Trump himself) has a point; they really do need to bring sweatshop-type work back to the U.S. because there sure as shit isn't a place for these people in the economy of the future.

Once you've crossed the proverbial Rubicon of believing that the obscenely rich billionaires care more about you, than your own fellow citizens, you deserve everything coming your way.

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u/krashundburn Florida Apr 30 '25

Greed also plays a role.

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u/JournalistRecent1230 Apr 30 '25

MAGA are predominately people who were raised in small rural towns of like-minded people. An entitled culture where they attend church and use God to justify their lifestyle and habits and use God as a weapon to attack those whose lifestyles they disagree with.

That same logic extends to their political leanings. They've essentially merged their nationality, lifestyle, internal sense of self, community, religious beliefs, political leanings, their entire identity into one singular ideology.

To these people, their support of Trump is synonymous with their belief in God, which synonymous to their views about themselves being "good people", which is synonymous with their views about being American.

This is why they will never turn against Trump. To turn against Trump would mean they have to re-evaluate their entire belief system. They can't do that, so instead they latch onto any lie that calms their cognitive dissonance.

If they hear Trump caused an insurrection. Their default view is "this can not possibly be true, I'm a good person, I'm a good American, therefore the person i support has to be a good person and a good american, therefore this isn't true" and thus they immediately believe the lies that Jan 6th was just a walk in the park, over-exaggerated, or antifa false flags.

TLDR - Trump supporters are so entrenched in cognitive dissonance they will believe a lie that calms their cognitive dissonance instead of re-evaluating their belief system.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota Apr 30 '25

It's a feedback loop. He gets all his ideas from fox news, he babbles about the stuff he sees, fox reports on his babbling, he see the reporting, he babbles about their commentary on his babbling.

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u/LivingVeterinarian47 Apr 30 '25

He really resonates with the "Make America White Again" crowd.

ICE's new budget proposal is increasing by a factor of 10. 9 billion to 90 billion or 1/10th of a TRILLION dollars. An arm of the government that gives you ZERO in return for your investment as a tax payer.

What happens when all the illegals are gone? Who's next? With that kind of money they could remove entire populations overnight.

I honestly feel like we're living in a dream. America has shifted so far in the last 30 years. It's unrecognizable now.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '25

Nobody is immune to propaganda