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Not a supporter of him, but fairly conservative, in a very red, very pro-Trump area. Really wouldn't even consider myself a Republican. But until someone decent on the Democrat side comes along I'll probably hold my nose and vote red, and I can honestly say I've never voted for Trump. Trump appeals to a large swath of the disenfranchised. Mostly white (though quite a few black and latino - at least in my area), blue collar, conservative, Christian, mostly middle class. In the mid to late 00s the Democratic party had built a minority coalition with support from upper middle class white people. And it worked pretty well for about a decade. But they took it too far. I think Obama is largely to blame for this - his 2012 campaign was seen as being based entirely on denigrating middle class white people (not my words - the sense I've gotten talking to neighbors and from listening to talk radio). Then it compounded with Hillary's run in 2016. "A basket of deplorables" and so on. So all those middle class white people - they got fed up with constantly being called racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic colonizers. They got angry. Trump was the response to all that. The other thing you should know is that Trump is an insult comic - same beats, same tenor. You probably don't think he's funny but if you talk about him he's going to come back and insult you in the worst ways possible (which can be funny if you like insult comedy and aren't the target). Not presidential AT ALL, and most on the left don't know how to handle that. But the disenfranchised he's catering to - they are eating it up. Thus he's built an army of diehard supporters. He's saying the things they like to hear, making fun of the people who have made fun of them, coloring the landscape with the right things (a decent economy in his first term, highly patriotic themes like renaming DoD to DoW, hating on the left, etc). THEN you had the insanity of draconian and unscientific COVID responses, BLM riots, trans issues, safe spaces and micro-aggressions, and a Democrat president that was sadly and effectively a dementia patient. The response to the first Trump term by the left was not healthy. All they had to do was not go insane, but they did, and now you get him again. All that to say that his base is going to back him up. If Trump says that there were fake electors his base is going to believe him. He could say (and has) just about anything and a large MAGA contingent will happily follow along. Not only do they feel represented by him but the left has acted so foolishly in response they feel justified in doubling down on that support. |