A man wearing an American flag slung around his shoulders like a crude superhero cape handed a street vendor named Cot a $20 bill. In exchange, Cot gave flag man a replica of the red “Make American Great Again” hat made famous by a certain celebrity billionaire turned inexplicably popular presidential candidate.
Trump dismisses Obama as a joke of a president whom foreign leaders don’t respect, but turns debates into self-promotional infomercials blended with comedy roasts of his flailing Republican opponents. He’s not afraid to make brash promises about keeping China in check or kicking ISIS’s ass, but when faced with a few thousand protesters from Chicago—many of them young college students—he tucked his tail, ran, and made simpering excuses. He brags about the way he runs his businesses, yet exploits his own workers.
It’s mystifying that Trump’s hard-core supporters are exposed to his ever-shifting positions, double talk, and flat-out lies yet still perceive him to be a truth teller unbridled by the restraints of political theater. Some supporters rationalize his most outrageous positions while explaining away others in order to keep the Trump faith.
“No? You don’t think he’s going to build the 30-foot-high wall?” she asked Shannon. “I think he will. And I’ll help him build it. I’ll lay the cement and push the wheelbarrows.”
The last is particularly galling because invokes Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage that posits that the longer and more heated an online argument, the greater the probability that someone will compare the topic at hand to Hitler or the Nazis, effectively cutting off the possibility of a civil discussion.
“People have been good to me here,” Shannon told me. “Earlier I was standing in line and this nice white man even offered me his chair. It’s not that bad.”
