5. Even when Trump has hit an impasse, his supporters mostly
continue to believe that he at least keeps trying to meet his promises on taxes, the economy, energy, foreign policy, strict-constructionist judges, and the border. So far his supporters feel Trump has not suffered a “
Read my lips” or “
You can keep your doctor” moment.
6. Voters are
angry over the sustained effort to remove or delegitimize a sitting president. Many of the controversies over Trump result from the inability of Hillary Clinton supporters to accept his shocking victory. Instead they try any means possible to abort his presidency in a way not seen in recent history. Trump voters cringe at such serial but so far unsuccessful efforts to delegitimize the President: the immediate law suits
challenging voting machines, the effort to
warp the Electoral College voting, initial
impeachment efforts, appeals to the
Emoluments Clause, the
25th Amendment, and the calcified
Logan Act, the
Mueller investigation that far exceeded and yet may have not met its original mandate to find Russian “collusion,” and the strange Andrew McCabe-Ron Rosenstein failed
palace coup. All this comes in addition to a disturbing assassination “chic,” as
Madonna,
Johnny Depp,
Kathy Griffin,
Robert DeNiro and dozens of others
express openly thoughts of killing, blowing up, or beating up an elected president. The Shorenstein Center at Harvard University
has found that mainstream media coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in office ranged from 70-90% negative of Trump, depending on the week, an asymmetry never quite seen before seen but one that erodes confidence in the media. Voters are developing a grudging respect for the 72-year-old, less-than-fit Trump who each day weathers unprecedented vitriol and yet does not give up, in the
Nietzschean sense of whatever does not kill him, seems to make him stronger.
7. Progressives seemingly do not appreciate historical contexts. By past presidential standards, Trump’s behavior while in the White House has not been characterized by the personal indiscretions of a John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. His language has been blunt, but then so was Harry Truman’s. He can be gross, but perhaps not so much as was Lyndon Johnson. The point is not to use such comparisons to excuse Trump’s rough speech and tweets, but to remind that the present media climate and the electronic age of the Internet and social media, along with general historical ignorance about prior presidencies, have warped objective analysis of Trump, the first president without either prior political office or military service.
To see reasons 8, 9, & 10, click read more.