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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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I also don’t see how anyone could possibly feel like they trust this guy. He has a long history as a real estate grifter tax evader, and a reputation for stiffing contractors. If you ever listen to him speak, it shouldn’t take more than a couple sentences to realize it’s all BS. There’s literally decades of news article on him being a con man Plus, doesn’t anyone remember his disaster of a first term?
I reckon some people are naive to that specific kind of scammer, others are stupid, yet others don't trust the sources of that information that he's a "real estate grifter tax evader, and a reputation for stiffing contractors" and some might even think "yeah, but he won't do it to us" - so a mix of stupidity and wishful thinking.
As the saying goes (in reverse order) "You can't deceive everybody all of the time but you can deceive some people all of the time or all people some of the time".
I mean, even in real estate his grifter's grift was still working so there were still people falling for it.
Even back then I wondered how his con line still worked. But I suppose once you believe he’s a billionaire, all bets are off. But in the political realm, you have his disaster of a first term, two failed runs for president, and 30 years of headlines about him being a con man. You have very memorable headlines about gold toilets and bankrupting a casino, twice. To balance that off the only thing casting him in a positive light is the TV show he funded for exactly that purpose
Just because you and I are starting from the assumption that those headlines are true, doesn't mean Trump supporters start from the same assumptions.
Judging by political discussions I've had with some people (though not related to Trump), people commonly judge political leaders based on how they feel about them, i.e. the impression they have of them, and that feeds in to trusting or not what they say and what is said about them, all of which would explain why the sterotypical loudmoth populist who talks confidently has been historically very successful.
Judging by what I see even withing the small leftwing political party I'm a member of in my own country, even supposedly thinking people (i.e. well educated types) have a strong confirmation bias for the words of leaders they "feel" are trustworthy and against criticism of them, though the stereotype of leader that best works at making those specific people feel thus is different from the brash loudmouth sterotype of Trump.
Zooming back to Trump and the US, I would say that people who still support him have a strong feeling that he's a good leader and that feds into a heavy bias to trust his words and distrust the criticism that appears of him as politically motivated attacks.
I would even go as far as saying that in a World were most authoritative common sources (i.e the Press, many of whom often overtly gloat of being "Opinion Makers") take political sides and hence aren't implicitly trustworthy, I expect this mechanism of anchoring one's trust on an individual that feels right is much more commonly used than it would have been in a Media environment were the Press didn't take sides and tried to shape opinion.
IMHO, Trump and others like him are a symptom of the Press having been increasingly used for Propaganda in the last couple of decades (though there are other effects at play) and hence why you see such types have more success in countries were the Press has longer and deeper taken political sides.