Trump supporters in their own words: the stupid, it burns

Trump may have taken office over half a year ago, but he’s still holding campaign-style rallies for his supporters, which makes sense since those are the only places where he gets any approval. The latest one was in Phoenix, Arizona, and The Guardian asked a few Trumpinos there to explain why they still support him. And the results make it clear that diehard Trump fans don’t have two shared IQ points between them.

Trump is a breath of fresh air. He’s totally not a political person. He’s a businessman: he’s anti-left, he’s anti-PC, he’s anti-stupid. He just wants to go in and make the best deal for Americans that he can.

It’s great we have someone who’s not a politician to shake things up. Our government needs a fresh viewpoint.

I voted for him because I was tired of politicians. He spoke to me on a personal level, not a political level.

That’s a recurring theme: that Trump doesn’t know anything about politics, which somehow makes him better as President. Because why ever would you want someone with experience in managing government affairs to take the most important job in government? Let’s just entrust the top job to an unqualified dolt who keeps making the same elementary mistakes and who surrounds himself with other unqualified dolts who don’t know what they’re doing any more than he does.

They also really want you to know that Trump isn’t racist, no sir, not at all, and you’re a dirty rotten lefty for even insinuating it:

Of course he’s not racist. That’s a label people want to put on someone when they don’t agree how to solve a problem. You don’t see the issue, so you attack. That’s the way the left has operated in our country very effectively.

He’s not a racist and his response to Charlottesville didn’t bother me. I’m a mother of two kids and I know every time there’s a fight there seems to be two people involved, but I can understand why people were upset. He should have done more to condemn white supremacists but I don’t think I would have done any better.

That’s because you’re not the president of a nation, nor should you be. And nor should he be. Funny, other presidents don’t have any trouble smacking down the KKK and neo-Nazis: Obama did it, both Bushes did it, Bill Clinton did it; even other 2016 Republican contenders did it. Basically, everyone who’s ever been in, or tried to win, the Oval Office found a way to properly condemn White supremacists … except for the man currently holding it.

I don’t think he’s a racist. I think if they’re calling him a racist, they may be racist.

This college student needs a remedial lesson in how words work.

They also think his whataboutism on Charlottesville was spot on:

I watched Charlottesville from the beginning to the end and there was violence on both sides. Neither retreated. The extreme left and the extreme right, they punched each other out.

Is Trump racist? Hell, no. The stuff about Charlottesville is bullshit and I agree 100% with what he said. There are haters on both sides.

Sure, it’s easy to look at fighting between two groups in the street and conclude that both are violent. But you know what’s even easier? Realizing that one of those groups is actual fucking Nazis, which right there should obliterate any false equivalence between them and their opponents. I don’t give a shit if PETA, antivaxxers and crystal-healing hipsters teamed up to fight the White supremacists; I’d still take their side, because the other camp is the modern personification of pure evil, no matter how they try to gussy it up with polo shirts and stupid memes.

I know the point’s been made a thousand times, but it’s still incredible that the same people who wax tearful patriotic pride about US troops shooting and bombing Nazis in World War II now wag their fingers at counter-protestors who punch modern Nazis on American soil.

But this guy takes the cake:

Both sides in Charlottesville are bad. He’s absolutely right. The Antifa [anti-fascist groups] are the equivalent of the KKK and both were responsible. Antifa is the KKK, just without the history. The Confederate flag is not racist: only 5% of slave owners had the Confederate flag; the US flag is more racist. Do you think I’d be that stupid to vote for an actual racist to be in office?

Yes. I do. Because you are, and you did. You voted for a man who is so famously racist he regularly gets applauded by White supremacists. That really ought to be the only sign you ever need that there’s something seriously goddamn wrong with the man you support.

Not unrelatedly, Trumpalos also believe they, as Christians, face much more discrimination than Muslims or anyone else. They really do live in Bizarro World.

I agreed with him on border protection and didn’t want someone being investigated by the FBI sitting in our president’s seat.

Instead you now have a President whose camp is the focus of a special counsel’s ever-growing investigation into their blatant ties with Russian election meddling. How do you feel about that trade?

I voted for him because I thought he was the best man, the one to change the country, to bring it back to the way it used to be. I’m 70 and I’ve seen country go down and down and the left become more and more socialist. I’d like to get back to the 1950s.

Because that was a great time for anyone who wasn’t straight, male, White and Christian.

I’m pleased so far except for Congress. He’s tried as hard as he can. He never stops working. He cares about the country and the people.

Never stops working? Except for all that time he spends on vacation, more than any other president.

I’ve been disappointed with McCain for decades. I admire his military service but being a good soldier does not make you a good politician.

But somehow you think being a six-times-failed businessman does?

He was not a politician like the ones in the past. He’s a businessman and the economy needed him.

We’re talking about a guy who bankrupted his casinos. Repeatedly.

My wife is much younger than me and pays $1,555 a month for Obamacare, about 20% of our income. I don’t know the solution. You go around the world and they find a way to provide healthcare for people.

Maybe that’s because other developed countries offer their people some form of government-funded healthcare – or, as you call it, socialism!!11!. Meanwhile, your president’s and party’s defunct healthcare proposals would all have doubled healthcare premiums in addition to stripping coverage from tens of millions of people. But you go ahead and keep supporting him anyway, since facts obviously don’t matter.

The Democrats are going to continue to protest and in the process they’re going to tear this nation apart. The protesters against Trump are haters. I fought for free speech all my life and they don’t believe in free speech.

As someone who “fought for free speech all [his] life”, you’d think he could recognize that citizens peacefully protesting their government is a textbook example of freedom of speech in action.

You’ve got to give him a chance. It’s a learning job and you’ve got to take things as they come. I like a man who has the ability to speak his mind. We’ve all been in the position of working in a company where we wish we could speak our mind without worrying about the consequences. He can speak his mind without worrying about scaring somebody or worrying about offending somebody.

First, he’s been there seven months now. He’s had his chance, and he’s used it to cause more political and diplomatic crises than the last few presidents combined. Maybe you should have instead voted for someone who had a clue how the fuck to do the job. And second, the fact that saying something might offend people doesn’t mean it’s something worth saying. It might just be a stupid and ignorant thing to say. Which accounts for most of the gibberish that tumbles out of Trump’s mouth, actually.

Will the media please stop trying to pass these people off as tragically misunderstood? The rest of the country understands them just fine. That’s why they’re scorned and ridiculed. They’re misinformed, jingoistic fools who fell for the bullshit peddled by another misinformed, jingoistic fool and in doing so dragged the rest of the country into a dark, festering pit from which it’ll take several more competent presidencies to recover, if it ever does.

They don’t deserve sympathy. They’ve earned the contempt they receive.

(via @fark)