While watching the Trump/Putin press conference live, I was shocked by what I witnessed the President of the United States doing. Yes, even after the past couple of years of witnessing Trump’s nonsense, I was still surprised at the level of stupid that was displayed. He actually stood up in front of the world and literally stated that he trusted a ruthless, murdering, former KGB Putin’s word over our own U.S. intelligence agencies.
And he praised and admired how strong Putin was.
That was his public display. I can’t even imagine what the secret, private, one-on-one meeting was like.
Here’s the thing, though…
After witnessing the disgraceful press conference, I was really wondering what the reaction would be around the “conservative” realms of the internet. So I ventured to a few well-known websites to view how it was being covered and what the comments were like from the visitors.
What I found was somewhat encouraging. They saw it. They instinctively knew how bad it was. Initial articles were written harshly criticizing Trump and the comments that followed were similarly critical. Sure, there were a few die-hard Trump supporters who defended him, but all in all, it was very negative. Heck, even quite a few Trumpies from FoxNews were very critical of it.
Then, the strange thing happened:
Slowly, but surely, the sentiment started to shift.
So, what changed?
What changed was that the spin cycle did it’s thing. The administration started to downplay Trump’s words and actions and started the narrative that Trump didn’t really mean what we all heard him very clearly say. And then the Trump Propaganda Minions (TPM) (Rush, Hannity, Levin, Tucker, etc.) kicked into action. Like a very well-oiled machine, these guys proceeded to defend their guy, mostly by ridiculing the wildest responses and critiques of Trump and by focusing entirely on the left’s hypocrisy. This is the way it’s always done. Make it all about the hypocrisy. By pointing out what leftists have done and said in the past about Russia and Putin, all of the sudden, it means Trump’s actions are just fine. Never mind that we (and THEY) excoriated those leftists for the actions that they did, now they are telling us to not worry about what Trump did because of the hypocrisy of the left.
Which makes them (the TPM) hypocrites, does it not, by roundly criticizing the left’s previous actions with Russia and then defending Trump’s now? My head is definitely spinning with all of this nonsense.
So now, after the spin cycle and the TPM (Trump Propaganda Minions) did their thing, all of the sudden, the vast majority of Republicans believe Trump’s performance at the Trump/Putin press conference was just great! According to an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll, a whopping 79% of Republicans approve of the way Trump performed at the press conference with Putin!
This is astounding and disturbing.
Think about that. Their initial perception, after witnessing the spectacle with their very own eyes, was that Trump siding with Putin over our own intelligence agencies was disgraceful. But after listening to the TPM who informed them of how they should really think about it, they changed their perceptions. They really do know how bad it was, but allowed themselves to be manipulated in order to rationalize their continued support of a man they also know to be an untrustworthy, lying, conman.
For so many years, I argued that it was those on the left who were blind followers, ignorant lemmings who allowed themselves to be led off a cliff. I had always thought that the right was more informed, more able to use critical thinking to form conclusions, better able to cut through the political spinning BS.
It’s obvious that is not so.
There are lemmings to the left of me and lemmings to the right of me, and either way we turn, it seems that the cliff looms.