Why People Support Trump (It's Frightening)

Click here for an excellent article at The New York Times by Thomas B. Edsall entitled "Trump Is Staking Out His Own Universe of ‘Alternative Facts,'" subtitled "The president’s re-election strategy isn’t based on reality. How could it be?"

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In less than a year, from May 2019 to March 2020, the share of weekly church-attending white Protestants convinced that Donald Trump was anointed by God to be president grew from 29.6 percent to 49.5 percent.

Good lord. "Anointed by God"? What's wrong with these people?

The Trump campaign’s digital sites serve a dual purpose. His supporters are able to enter a self-contained, self-reinforcing arena where Trump reigns supreme, and the campaign gets detailed marketing information about those who go through the elaborate sign-up process — information subsequently used for voter mobilization, fund-raising and volunteer recruitment.

The article says that Stefan Smith, a Democratic tech strategist, says the Trump campaign is "trapping people inside an ecosystem of dangerous misinformation, conspiracy theories, and grievance politics. And it’s doing so while making the experience as fun and exciting as possible."

“The new Trump campaign app uses gamification to drive voter outreach and valuable data collection,” CNN reported on April 23. “Share the campaign app with a friend, win 100 points. Earn 5,000 points and you can redeem a campaign store discount. Earn 100,000 points, and you can get a picture with President Donald Trump.”

Those who download the Trump app can “watch live ‘shows’ hosted by senior campaign aides and surrogates,” according to CNN, and receive tutorial videos from top campaign aides and surrogates like Lara Trump, who explains how to become a “digital activist” on social media and host a “MAGA meet up.” Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr, explains how to become a fund-raising “bundler” and political director Chris Carr discusses how to be a grass roots “team leader.”

Parscale himself [Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager] told viewers that his favorite item at his Florida home is Hillary Clinton toilet paper: “I have boxes of it,” he said, “and I take it into the bathroom and it’s just enjoyable since she said so many mean things about me and our campaign and our president.”

A scholarly article about the phenomenon, “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy,” published in 2018 in the American Sociological Review by Oliver Hahl, Minjae Kim and Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan, of the business schools at Yale, Northwestern and M.I.T., pose the question: “How can a constituency of voters find a candidate authentically appealing (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to nonnormative private prejudices)?”

How does a lying demagogue attract and keep supporters? Well, “the lying demagogue claims to be an authentic champion of those who are subject to social control by the established political leadership.” The target audience is those who believe that their interests are not represented by the political establishment. The established political leadership is repelled by the actions of "the lying demagogue," and this just reinforces the followers' belief that the demagogue is on their side, fighting their fight, enraging the right people.

People may feel anxious or angry about the political landscape they see around them -- and the demagogue tries to keep them angry.

When people are anxious they tend to seek out new information. Anxiety rouses people from a sort of ‘autopilot’ mode and causes them to re-evaluate their beliefs.

Anger, in contrast, has the opposite effect. When people are angry they tend to mentally retreat and dig in on the things that they know and believe to be true.

The result?

The psychological nature of anger essentially precludes any sort of attitudinal change against Trump. Anger causes Trump’s supporters to become more reliant on information they receive from him, the RNC, Fox News, etc.

Here's some scary stuff: Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, warned in an April 9 appearance on David Plouffe’s podcast, that

the numbers are pretty stark. Joe Biden has 4.6 million Twitter followers. Donald Trump has 75 million. Joe Biden has 1.7 million Facebook fans. Donald Trump has 28 million.

And: “Biden’s first virtual online chat got 5,000 people. Just one with Lara Trump gets 945,000.”