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Public Policy Polling has a new poll out that’s depressing as hell, and a sign of just how fact-deprived Trump voters truly are.
Among other findings, only 45% of Trump voters think Donald Trump Jr. met with Russians last year to discuss their offer to help his father win the election.
And 32% say it didn’t happen at all.
This is after Donald Trump Jr. already admitted publicly that he met with the Russians, and Donald Trump Sr. tweeted the fact that his son met with the Russians. After all that, only 45% believe it.
And people wonder how democracies die.
Another troubling finding: Even though Donald Trump Jr. admitted this too, only 26% of Trump voters think the Russians wanted Trump to win. And 44% think Putin wanted Hillary to win. (Putin HATED Hillary, and that’s a leading reason he got involved int he election to begin with.) Again, Donald Trump Jr. already tweeted out the emails he received from an intermediary for the Russians, acknowledging that they wanted Trump to win and wanted to help. Yet that admission by a Trump himself isn’t enough for Trump voters.
Also bizarre, only 13% of Trump voters think Trump’s team worked with Russians to help his campaign. Again, junior already admitted meeting with the Russians for this very purpose.
PPP calls all of this a certain amount of willful ignorance. I fear it’s worse than that. PPP even polled how Trump voters would feel if he shot someone. Only 29% disapprove, while 45% approve — without even knowing who he shot or why.
I watch Trump’s incremental train wreck and it explains a lot about how bad men rose to power in the past. It’s not just that they slowly, stealthily consolidate power when no one is looking. It can also be the fault of a public who knowingly accept, and shrug off, what was previously unthinkable.
Someone said to me the other day, “the problem isn’t Trump, the problem is America.” They meant that the Trump phenomenon goes much deeper than a shallow narcissist who never outgrew puberty and simply got lucky at the ballot box. Trump is in power because voters knew what he was, and voted for him anyway. Trump spewed sexism, racism, mocked people with disabilities and openly praised, and even embraced and defended, some of the world’s worst dictators, while repeatedly criticizing America. And people voted for him anyway.
Yes, Trump lost the popular vote; so in the end, the American people didn’t choose him to be their president. But he still got far too many votes after everything we learned about him during the campaign. Trump received 63 million votes, to Hillary Clinton’s 65.8 million. Hillary kicked Trump’s ass. But someone as vile and unqualified as Trump should have lost by double-digit margins. And he didn’t.
Maybe Trump isn’t the only thing that’s broken. Maybe America is too. The question is whether we still have time to fix her.
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