My wife and I took a long evening walk, lightly debating whether the election would be a Hillary rout or if Trump would make it close. Then we got home and turned on the TV.
I don’t think that it was so much give Trump a chance, but more, “Calm down. He’s not going to be a good president, but if we survived G.W. Bush we can survive him.”
Just barely so far. The judge is still out.
Yup. My Wife’s family are Trump supporters. Or where, anyway. I think a few are coming around.
We are talking about people with high intelligence, and great education. Teachers, a Nurse Practitioner, a CEO. Other people in executive positions. And I like them all.
The one that despises Trump as much as my wife and I is an anthropologist turn musician.
I think that are all a bit ashamed of themselves. Not sure. We don’t talk politics.
TBF he’s living proof that in America anybody can run for President.
Dammit.
To quote Molly Ivins (who was, I think, quoting someone else) “If you took out the fools and morons it wouldn’t be a representative democracy anymore.”
There just don’t have to be that MANY of them.
Lol.
You yanks really do not get how fucking racist your “intelligent”, “nice”, “educated” friends, neighbors and family are.
Every vote for Trump represents someone whose racism trumps (ha!) every single other value.
80 million people whose only reason to not be a full on KKK member is that they’re afraid to burn their fingers.
Well, I just mentioned to a coworker that Trump is an enabler for every uneducated, unintelligent bully in the world and he has made it possible for previously judged bad behaviour to be acceptable. And now we’ve learned that that is a really big percentage of the population.
Aside from the comparison to GWB, which is like comparing a rabid tiger to an angry chihuahua in terms of danger, the rest of that is true. He damaged the country immensely (in particular our democracy) but the country survived.
Lots of the assurances were definitely wrong though. He didn’t surround himself with good advisors; he hired sycophants and co conspirators, and the few who had actual good advice were mostly ignored.
I don’t remember anyone on the Dope praising Trump or saying he’d be a great - or even a good - President in the runup to the 2016 election.
If I could, I’d take a third Dubya term in a heartbeat over a second Trump term. GWB was a paragon of enlightened statesmanship compared to that guy.
Around 2018 a neighbor had a bumper sticker on his pickup:
I never dreamed I’d miss George Bush
I voted Republican from 1996 all the way until 2016 when I realized I couldn’t hold my nose and support Trump. I won’t say I knew he’d turn out as bad as he did, but I thought he was incompetent and full of shit.
Good for you. keep is up. Many of us have been voting for a bit longer.
Same here. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and other assorted right wing radio folks. I was deep into that propaganda. And yet even I saw that he was going to be awful. There was no way I could ever give a guy like that my vote.
By 2020 I was a Democrat.
I don’t remember many Doper Trump supporters pre 2016 election either. There was a particularly annoying young twit that posted a pic of himself dancing for joy when Trump was elected. He was telling everyone they were over reacting and that Trump was going to turn everything around and make everything awesome. I assume he found another forum to hang out in.
The ones I remember were conservatives who either were happy with the outcome or did not vote for Trump but hoped he would be constrained to support their Republican values. Most (all?) of them are no longer here, either because they bought into the Trump playbook that they could say anything they wanted without consequence (banned) or they eventually became too embarrassed about his behavior to stick around and defend him anymore.
I think it was Starving Artist?
Here is a post where Starving Artist was fawning over Trump, prior to election:
Haven’t found a dance photo though.
That’s so gross. Excuse me, I feel the need to puke.
SA was seriously troubled in a lot of ways.
I won’t directly point to the post (and I do sincerely apologize in advance) but read his “paper towel tube” post and try not to despair for humanity
That’s among many, many, many posts across unnumbered threads that defended the indefensible. I suppose it’s a good thing that such people gravitate to Trump and that this somehow drives them to out themselves as among the scum of humanity but it boggled my mind that there were so, so many of them. I knew there was a sizable number but did not think it was quite so many