You can tell who never bothered to watch a single Trump rally or campaign event by the fact that they’ll LARP being a deceived supporter.

Seriously, what is with this!?

Why are so many liberals pretending to be offended Trump supporters online? It’s obviously fake.

My company is majority conservative, not one single person I’ve even heard of is mad at Trump - except that he isn’t going far enough fast enough for them.

I think you're right. I've seen so many conservatives online relish in hatred as illegal immigrants are shipped to Guantamo, as trans people are purged from government and the military and stripped of HRT, as Trump called Zelensky a dictator and threatens to seize Greenland and annex Canada, as agencies are gutted, and puts out AI slop of Gaza turned into a billionaire's resort with golden statues of Trump and Bibi, as Bannon and Musk sieg hieled.. it's all wildly popular.

I have no empathy for such people. If they run the country into the ground, I just hope they suffer too.

You’re an extremist. This may be news to you.

What, I'm an extremist for not wanting the US to conquer our allies? For opposing indefinite detainment of immigrants in concentration camps? For opposing the purge of trans people?

If that's extreme I'm happy to be an extremist.

When did Trump pledge to destroy the NIH? He did also specficially disavow Project 2025 and is now enacting a whole bunch of it.

He said he wouldn't in statements, however every single one of his proposed budgets included cuts that would do so.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/donald-trumps...

> He said he wouldn't in statements

So he specifically did the opposite of campaign on it then. Most voters weren't going to go and read through his proposed budgets and everyone knows that.

When he brought the person who wrote the forward to Project 2025 on as VP? How about when he nominated Russell Vought as Director of OMB in 2020?

Irrelevant. He disavowed it.

He might be a well known liar, and people might’ve been stupid to believe him when he disavowed Project 2025, but his campaign did not promise to enact these policies.

Right here: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...

This is my point, he specifically disavowed Project 2025 while campaigning.

His words disavowed Project 2025, but his actions very obviously supported it. Reminds me of an apt quote:

"I'm not a litigious man... that's why I have lawyers." -- Conrad "Skip" Meinhofer IV

It feels like we're bending over backwards to minimize a liar lying here. He did not campaign on enacting Project 2025. He literally stood on the stage at rallies and disavowed it. Yeah, he was lying and a lot of us knew it but that doesn't change what he campaigned on.

If a politician tells a bold faced lie we shouldn't minimize it by saying "oh but everyone knew what he really meant". He lied to voters.

Pointing out that a liar's true intentions are obvious does not minimize the fact that they lied.

Not obvious to all. I have relatives who get all their “news” from a Facebook feed that’s heavily filtered to confirm their priors. They told me time and time again that Trump had disavowed Project 2025. The obviousness of his lies were not apparent to them. Yes, they should be better informed (believe me, I know) but they’re far from alone.

So that’s why it bugs me when I see someone say “he’s doing exactly what he said he’d do!” and the story quickly pivots to “well yes of course he specifically said he wasn’t going to do that but it was obvious he was lying”. A lot of people are living in vastly different information ecosystems, which is why the words coming out of a candidate’s mouth matter.

Remember when it came out that Project 2025 was going to be the playbook? And Trump disavowed it but all evidence pointed to the contrary? And our priors pointed to him not being inclined to tell the truth?

That's when we knew this would happen.

Yes, those of us paying attention knew that when he disavowed Project 2025 he was talking nonsense. But OP said Trump "campaigned on doing exactly these things". He didn't. He campaigned on literally disavowing these things.

"we knew this would happen" !== "he campaigned on doing exactly these things"

Yes, and that's my point. Anyone who truly, honestly "didn't know" doesn't deserve to have a vote.

I’d suggest your viewpoint is a pretty sheltered one. Many people (relatives of mine included, sadly) marinate in a stew of social media algorithms showing them things that confirm their priors and they aren’t exposed to any oppositional media.

Perhaps they don’t deserve a vote. But if they don’t then a lot of voters don’t deserve a vote. And maybe we ought to be asking ourselves “what systems have we set up that have led to such wildly underinformed voters? Are there things we can do to rectify that?” rather than just give up on a significant section of the population. Much easier to write it off as a person’s individual failure than consider it as a societal issue.

(not to mention, “they don’t deserve a vote” doesn’t say a whole lot. They still have a vote even if we decide they’re undeserving. We’re all in it together, like it or not)

I went through this 2016-2020. This time I'm all in on the "leopards ate my face" stance. Instead of feeling bad, I now laugh at people who voted for this and are getting hurt.

I can't help that people are this stupid. And if they hurt themselves in the process, good. It'll be a cleansing.

If only they were only exposed to my propaganda.

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth and sooner or later that debt is paid"

I don’t see the value in your contribution here. There is an objective truth I think everyone participating in the discussion agrees on: Trump lied in campaign speeches and the reality was clear to those in possession of all the facts. Events post election have indeed confirmed that he was lying.

So what is “my propaganda” you’re referring to? There’s just a truth that some people weren’t made aware of.

I see lying as institutional laziness on the decade scale.

The propaganda is pervasive enough to not realize its there at all. You shouldn't accuse others of being in their own informational bubble without realizing you're in your own. The desire to disenfranchise is also an extreme authoritarian impulse.

I ask again: in the context of this discussion, what is my propaganda? What am I saying that is untrue? You’re saying a lot of vague lofty statements. Be specific.

> The desire to disenfranchise is also an extreme authoritarian impulse.

Just as well I didn’t do that then!

Do you expect your relatives will learn anything from this experience? I expect not. Folks who get conned once are more likely to get conned again.

They didn’t learn anything last time so I doubt it. Part of me wants to say “screw them” but we’re all locked in this room together.

> Anyone who truly, honestly "didn't know" doesn't deserve to have a vote.

We are, unfortunately, a country where the most popular search on Google on election day last November was "Did Biden drop out?".

That's the lack of an educated electorate we have to deal with.

He did not. In fact he promised the opposite.

Do I think anyone not drinking the koolade could see this coming? Sure. But that wasn’t the question, the question is what could be done. There are exactly two things, only one of which is legal, which is impeachment.