Which brings me back to supporters of Donald Trump. “By coming up with these rationalizations, people are able to preserve the impression that their behaviors and attitudes are consistent,” Benjamin Le, a psychology professor of Haverford College, has written. A man who cheats on his spouse may justify his actions by saying that the marriage was irretrievably broken, that he felt unloved by his wife, that he hasn’t felt happy for many years and she’s to blame. A smoker may justify her habit by reassuring herself that even though smoking can cause cancer, she knows people who have smoked and lived long, healthy lives. If a person is on a diet and spends late nights eating snacks, they may tell themselves that they’ll work out the next day to burn off the extra calories. What we human beings don’t do nearly enough is change our behavior so that it aligns with values that are estimable and ennobling. ![]() The human mind creates defense mechanisms to eliminate such negative feelings: avoiding or ignoring the dissonance, undermining evidence of the dissonance, belittling its importance. It can’t be sustained something has to give. This disharmony causes distress, agitation, and self-loathing. None of us live comfortably with cognitive dissonance, the mental stress that results when people’s beliefs and actions come into direct contradiction with one another. Part of the explanation can be found in the realm of human psychology. At the same time, they have aligned themselves with a malignant figure whose corruptions are undisguised. I can’t deny what I have seen with my own eyes I can’t let my own aversion to Trump turn his supporters into caricatures. ![]() Trump supporters can’t simply be dismissed as “a basket of deplorables.” Many are devoted parents and spouses, loyal friends and good neighbors, willing to reach out a hand to those in need. Read: The worst thing to come out of Trump’s town hall didn’t come from Trump I think I’ve come to understand their perspective, even though I profoundly disagree with it. I engage them in conversation and reply to their emails, less to debate than to listen. I read their articles and social-media posts, listen to their interviews, and track the findings of focus groups. I’m intentional about trying to better understand the mind of Trump supporters. How do they rationalize their embrace of a man whose ethical transgressions and moral depravity so far exceed that of Bill Clinton, whom many of them attacked in the 1990s on moral grounds? The question I’ve been asked more than any other during the Trump era is how Trump supporters-including tens of millions of evangelical Christians and Republicans who have long viewed themselves as champions of “family values” and “law and order”-justify their enthusiastic support for the former president. And I received a number of calls saying they had been either leaning towards DeSantis or were firmly in his camp, and they said they have now decided to fully support Trump, based on the town hall.” ![]() “I even tried to get people to call me who didn’t think he did well, but no luck. “One hundred percent approval of Trump’s performance,” this individual, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, told me. ![]() The day after the town hall, I asked a person in the talk-radio world how his listeners had responded. And he spewed lie after lie after lie about the 2020 election and virtually every other topic that came up.Īs the CNN anchor Jake Tapper said of Trump, summing up the night, “He declared war on the truth, and I’m not sure that he didn’t win.” He wouldn’t say whether he hoped that Ukraine would win the war against Russia. Trump defended taking top-secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump called the Black police officer who had shot and killed one of the rioters storming the Capitol a “thug,” falsely claiming that the officer had bragged about the incident. Those statements, too, brought applause from the raucous audience. He also described the January 6 insurrection as a “beautiful day” and declared that, if reelected president in 2024, he would pardon a “large portion” of the rioters. His statement elicited applause and laughter from the mostly pro-Trump crowd. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million in damages because a jury unanimously concluded that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her. He used the phrase “whack job” to describe E. During a CNN town hall earlier this month, Donald Trump acted as expected.
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