Trump's Tampa circus proves you can't reason with his base [View all]

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin
August 1 at 9:45 AM

For once, the most memorable thing about one of the president’s rallies was not his baldfaced lies nor his attacks on reality. Rather, Trump’s Tampa rally will be remembered for the reporting of CNN’s Jim Acosta. He revealed more accurately than most what the Trump base, or at least part of it, looks and sounds like and what Trump must do to hold its attention. He tweeted:

Link to tweet

In between reports, Acosta strolled over to engage with the hooters and hollerers, extending them the civility and respect they would deny anyone who contradicts their cult leader.

A few observations are in order:

First, this is the behavior Trump incites and amplifies with his attacks on the free press. When he says the media is the “enemy of the people” or the worst people or the most dishonest people, his followers take it as license to treat members of the media as something less than human. Trump has defined the press as part of “the other,” and his cult responds with the kind of venom used to keep a foreign body at bay.

Second, let’s not be surprised when 35 percent or so of voters consistently tell pollsters that the president is the victim of a witch hunt or that they agree with every policy position and action he takes. Trump fans’ politics is not the politics of rationality, considered judgment or empirical observation. Blind hatred and unthinking boorishness are not moderated by new facts or observable phenomena. We should stop marveling as his “success” in holding his base as if this were a reflection of his political skill, let alone the efficacy of his policies. Rather, the unbreakable and unblinking devotion of his unhinged base is confirmation that he now must rely on support from people oblivious to reality.

Third, we should stop infantilizing Trump supporters, treating them as hapless victims of forces beyond their control. We’ve done them wrong. They come from “real America.” Bunk. Whatever one’s economic hardships, any threatening, unhinged conduct and crude insults shouldn’t be excused. Trump cultists claim to be injured by the disrespect of “elites”; the only ones showing disrespect in Tampa were those in the mob. (And anyway, what ever happened to personal responsibility for one’s life choices?)

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/08/01/trumps-tampa-circus-proves-you-cant-reason-with-his-base/