Donald Trump faces four indictments, 91 criminal charges and hundreds of years of maximum prison time combined.
This is a former president who — according to the latest grand jury indictment in Fulton County, Georgia — participated in a “criminal enterprise.” Trump and 18 co-defendants are accused of trying “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” in 2020. Among the 13 felony charges he faces is one count of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act and two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery.
Most of those charges are related to a fake elector scheme by the Trump campaign in which a slate of “alternate” electors in Georgia would cast electoral votes for Trump instead of Joe Biden. The president of the most powerful democracy in the world allegedly tried to steal an election.
We can’t say it often enough: This is serious. Americans cannot shrug this off or normalize it, no matter how many times Trump gets indicted. Yet it feels like business as usual. Not only is Trump favored to win the GOP presidential nomination, he’s also neck and neck with President Biden in the 2024 general election, according to a July poll by the New York Times/Siena Poll.
MORE THAN A CULT
Trump’s support cannot only be explained as the product of the cult-like power he has over his MAGA base, which accounts for roughly 40% of Republican voters who believe those indictments are nothing but a conspiracy against him.
more: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article278265068.html
Context matters. When they’re in a conversation with another person that they care for and are face-to-face, who is talking about a contrary point of view, logic and thinking is present in some small amount in their brain. They’ll actually think about the other person’s point, and then make the mental shrug about Trump and his crimes and their effect on his viability/reasonableness as a candidate.
If they’re in a group of other supporters, or on the internet, they very quickly do the republican/conservative thing of ‘falling in line’ and will try to publicly demonstrate (virtue signaling, aye?) how much they are part of the group and follow its standards.
I’ve had several conversations with my parents. When it is just me and one of them, I get a semi-reasonable conversation, but if another person is present, suddenly it’s like having a conversation with a fox news talking-head.
You are lucky honestly. I think my parents double down because it’s me talking :/
And I’m definitely more disappointed and upset because it’s them, the people who supposedly raised me to be good.