There are not too many Republicans (that I know of) in my life. One is my brother, who doesn’t like or support Trump, but voted for him in 2024 (“Trump is an ass, but Biden’s mind has slipped away”) and has apparently become conservative over the years. The other relative is a diehard Trumper. He thinks djt is" the greatest president we’ve ever had", and even has a picture of him on the wall. I haven’t spoken to either one yet. I probably won’t gloat, unless provoked, and if they get me started there’s going to be a lot of "I told you so"s being thrown about.
Have any of you heard from the dumbasses misguided folks in your life?
My mother is ultra-MAGA, my father only mildly so. Last night, she talked about how Abbott was a good governor because he banned sharia law, and she agrees that Paxton was a lousy Republican choice for senator. She also talked about migrant caravans that will now come to Texas in the future and whether or not she ought to postpone her upcoming international flights for fear that post-election violence and rioting might shutdown airports or whatnot and cause her to be unable to fly back into the USA. Bear in mind, she once worried that Islamic terrorists were going to target her tiny church in Texas.
No one else in my family or relatives are MAGA.
The weird thing is that my mom was diehard opposed to Trump in 2016. She flipped.
It really is like a religious conversion. An atheist finding god after all, etc.
I don’t have any Trump lovers in my life.
At least nobody who has admitted it.
I have a pro-Trump cousin to whom I speak intermittently, and to whom I am loyal because of his kindness over decades to my nuclear family. We avoid detailed political discussion except to acknowledge, ruefully/affectionally/laughingly, that we know we strongly disagree, but we respect each other’s right to have differing opinions.
I avoid Facebook, but my stronger-stomached spouse does not, and he tells me that my cousin often posts pro-Trump memes.
So I just now asked my spouse, “Did [cousin] post anything after the election on Facebook”?
The answer was “nope, not really. Something sarcastic about LGBTQ rights a few days beforehand, but nothing since the election.”
Though really, what would I expect? Of course he’s not going to suddenly post, “gosh, we Trumpers had it all wrong, now I see the error of our ways!” Especially since he was raised in an upper middle class family and then married into great wealth, so “little people” concerns like inflation have never affected him. He’ll never see the world as I do, but he also has the decency not to hate people with differing political views.
I know several Trump supporters in my life, but not anyone that would probably qualify as a “lover”. You know, the ones that bring up his grace or wear MAGA clothing outside a rally.
Colorado looks pretty blue these days, but that’s because many of our Republicans are the Reagan-style - keep money in our pockets, keep the military well paid, “illegals is fine as long as they work my fields/clean my bathrooms/don’t run for office” sorts.
Although the younger folks are much more honestly blue IMHO.
The Colorado Republicans I deal with though (including my in-laws, le sigh) are … cautious but resigned. They worry about military spending being cut, but are exhausted by high prices and endless wars, and willing to be critical about Trump on both fronts, though there is a TON of face-saving “Iran really needed to be stopped, but this wasn’t the way” sort of language for example.
When I was eating lunch in the “Teachers’ (no way resembling a) Lounge”, a teacher who is a well known Trumpeteer came in. Evily, I enthusiastically greeted her with, “How about last night!?” From her eyes, I could tell that she intentionally misinterpreted that question as meaning, “How about that School Board meeting last night?” She answered, “Yeah, it’s just crazy the stuff they do. I guess now we’ll have to pay 2 people to do the same job.” I just let it go. LOL
Yeah. I know people who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but even they were disgusted by January 6 and have not voted for Trump since.
My neighbor who flew the Trump flag (a big one) a few years ago now has a yardful of blue Democrat election signs. He’s usually so picky about his yard, but the signs are still there.
My childhood friend posted to social media yesterday about how the midterms were a test of the devil and Trump’s going to make everybody Christian. I just blocked her without comment. She’s not much different now than she was at 16.
Haven’t seen a large chunk of my family in years. I assume they’re still Trumpers. They’re from what remains a very red county in Texas. Probably won’t be looking them up anytime soon.
I know one. He lamented that there would be gridlock for the next two years.
I have a browser plugin that lets me know if Facebook friends un-friend me. Someone un-friended me after I posted a pic of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. She hasn’t been outwardly Trumpy but she has always seemed outwardly angry.
I have a brother who is a very active pro-Trumper (he even moved to W Palm Beach and two of his kids are White House interns). The rest of the family is horrified by his behavior, but as a courtesy I haven’t contacted him since the election, and may never again.
OT, but, why? Half a century ago, of my own accord, I vowed to never say that (or any equivalent). It just serves not useful purpose, and, in my case, does not make me feel better. I prefer to focus on how to fix the damage.
Bringing it back to topic, I think a lot of people’s “I told you sos” are trying to prevent the issue from happening again which is a distinct possibility.
Granted, you can say your I-told-you-so’s in a counterproductive, gloating manner, but if we don’t try to change the mind of the remaining Trump/Autocrat lovers, then they still get to vote in 2028 and down the line.
But I agree that doing so just to gloat is about pleasing yourself (which is fair), rather than trying to fix the future. Different strokes for different folks.
Is he aware that Biden wasn’t on the ballot in 2024?
I no longer see any youtube videos saying that all the polls reporting that the Democrats are leading are fakes.
I’ve spoken to at least a couple of Trump supporters since the election; but not about politics. Not going to bring it up unless they do.
I actually find that this sense, or this essential social skill, is what divides liberals/normals and conservatives. They (the conservatives) do not respect other people’s rights to have different opinions. It’s just that they may have a different view about the opinion in question, or the haver of that opinion. And if that opinion haver is a relative or a friend, they are likely to show respect or altogether avoid engaging the opini in question, as is your case here. But in terms of respecting a differing opinion, in any version of ‘respecting’ you wish to interpret this, then no, they absolutely do not respect different or differing opinions and this is actually the main contention anyone should have with them.
My parents live in Paul Gosar’s district in Arizona, and all that that implies. They chose to move there several years ago from California. They were already deep into the MAGA cult.
While I was visiting less than a month ago, my stepmom tried to pick a big political fight over the fact that one of her close friends, who is a Dem, told her she wished Trump would just die. My stepmom (who had been drinking) began to berate me over this out of the blue, saying her friend watched “that crazy MS NOW or MS NBC or whatever it is,” and attributed the ugly sentiment about Trump to this.
I affirmatively avoid discussing politics in any way while visiting my parents. I had said nothing political to spark up this diatribe. But after she started it, I pointed out that maybe her friend felt as she did due to things Trump had actually been saying, and it wasn’t due to anything being said on MS NOW.
My stepmom loudly overtalked me, began waving her arms around and shrieked, “Joe Biden called us morons! Hillary Clinton called us deplorables!”
At which point, I stood, bid her good night and went to my room.
Fifteen minutes later, she sent me an apologetic text, saying we were talking about different things. I left her to stew until the next day.
I finally replied the following morning in an email and said these things, among others: I had not been talking about anything. Her beef was with her friend, not me, and I didn’t think I should be held accountable for what her friend had said. Joe Biden hasn’t been in office for 2 years, and Hillary Clinton not much in evidence for 12. Maybe get the fuck over it.
I pointed out that it was just possible her friend was angry over Trump only 2 days earlier calling for Iran, an enemy, to bomb 2 American cities because there are < gasp > Democrats in them, and that while I would not personally say out loud what her friend had said, I sure understood the sentiment. I concluded that if she didn’t get what was wrong with what Trump said, then shame on her.
When we spoke face to face later that morning, she was very contrite and said she wouldn’t bring up politics again. Needless to say, I won’t, either.
But I’m quite curious to know if anything about their views has changed since this election. I suspect not.
At least their swamp is getting very tiny.
Sadly, I have sometimes found this to be true on the liberal side as well here on the SDMB.
I have no wish to rehash debates or call out any particular posters, but suffice it to say I have been saddened by nasty responses from a few posters I (previously) respected, simply because I spoke gently about the occasional conservative poster here, or described my refusal to disown my cousin over his support for Trump.
ETA: This is definitely not meant as a blanket statement. I expect (hope!) that the majority of the posters here that I think very highly of are able to tolerate differences of opinion both IRL and on line.