Branch Trumpvidians 6: Maybe They'll Finally Abandon Him

[Bluebirdbluebell]

Holy Sh*t! 

I use to laugh at the title "Branch Trumpvidians", but bless my soul it's literal.

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In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Tex., the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.

But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump.

“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”

Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.

You may not be able to see this article, but here's the link. 

Here are some more quotes:

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The attention to Mr. Trump’s choice of locale highlights the long political afterlife of the Waco standoff. A polarizing episode in its own time, the deadly raid was invoked in the 1990s by right-wing extremists including Timothy McVeigh, often to the dismay of the surviving Branch Davidians. It has remained a cause for contemporary far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

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“Waco is a touchstone for the far right,” said Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex., and an authority on the standoff.

He said Mr. Trump’s decision to begin his campaign there, if intentional in its nod to the siege, would echo Ronald Reagan’s August 1980 speech affirming his support of “states’ rights” at a county fair near Philadelphia, Miss., a town known for the murder of three civil rights activists 16 years earlier.

[GreyhoundFan]

I need a jumbo airsickness bag:

 

[Xan]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I need a jumbo airsickness bag:

 

Not only did she call Donny a "precious, precious man", she did it twice.  Ugh.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yuck:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

My eyes hurt from rolling:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

LOL:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"How big is Trump’s true-believer base?"

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As Donald Trump seeks to mobilize his base against a potential indictment, a big question is: Just how big is Trump’s true-believer base? How many people are willing to stand by Trump no matter what?

This matters both when it comes to any backlash against an indictment — around which Trump has increasingly alluded to the prospect of violence — and for Trump’s 2024 presidential prospects.

The answer: Die-hard support remains substantial. But the number has clearly shrunk. And it’s apparently not a majority of the Republican Party.

This is a somewhat subjective exercise, but there are a number of measures we can isolate.

One of the best ways to look at the question is to focus on how many Republicans view Trump not just favorably but “very” or “strongly” favorably.

And by this measure, Trump’s support has declined significantly since his 2020 defeat. While Fox News polling in October 2020 showed that 7 in 10 Republicans had a “strongly” favorable opinion of him, by December 2022, that 69 percent had dropped to 43 percent.

Unfavorable views of Trump have increased from around 1 in 10 Republicans to around 2 in 10 over that span, but nearly as significant is the movement from “strongly” favorable to merely “somewhat” favorable.

And the movement has been steady.

While few pollsters have regularly broken down perceptions of Trump in this way, data from those who have done so echoes Fox’s data.

An AP-NORC poll from January showed just 14 percent of Americans overall viewed Trump “very favorably.” That was Trump’s lowest number on record — and it was half what it was in 2019.

Similarly, the Pew Research Center has employed something it calls a “feeling thermometer” on Trump — basically asking people to assign a number to how they view the former president. The percentage of Republican-leaning voters who gave him a “very warm” number (between 76 and 100) was 41 percent. That was his lowest mark since the 2016 campaign, and it was down from 61 percent in April 2020.

Another telling measure is how many Republicans view themselves as Trump-first rather than party-first. NBC News has asked this question frequently, gauging whether GOP-leaning voters view themselves more as supporters of Trump or supporters of the party.

NBC’s most recent poll, in January, showed 33 percent viewed themselves as Trump-first. That’s compared to a majority who often said so while he was in office.

Related to the above is the percentage to profess to be 2024 dead-enders — that is, those who would want Trump to run as an independent if he was denied the GOP nomination. This is an instructive measure, because it represents a scenario that would in all likelihood cost the GOP the presidency (whether its advocates realize that or not). It would effectively be a protest vote.

In a Monmouth University poll last month, 27 percent of Republican-leaning voters said they would want Trump to run as an independent (vs. 67 percent who wouldn’t). In another poll, 28 percent said they would actually vote for Trump in that scenario, even if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the GOP nominee.

Which brings us to the possible indictment.

Marist came out with a new poll Monday that also sheds some light. What’s perhaps most interesting about it is that it shows a majority of Republicans acknowledging that Trump has done something unethical related to the various investigations of him.

The percentage who think he’s done “nothing wrong,” by contrast: 45 percent.

So 45 percent say he’s done nothing wrong, 41 to 43 percent have a strongly favorable opinion of him, 33 percent view themselves as Trump-first rather than party-first, and nearly 3 in 10 at least profess a willingness to back him as an independent.

These are all different measures suggesting varying degrees of true devotion, but none are approaching a majority right now. And most used to be majority views in the GOP.

That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a rallying effect among GOP-leaning voters if Trump is indicted; Trump retains substantial goodwill among Republicans, and perhaps enough Republicans will buy into his claims of persecution that it will resolidify his base. In addition, we’re still talking about significant numbers — even in their depressed state — that could just about be enough to deliver him the nomination again, or cause major problems if we see the unrest Trump is clearly toying with.

But Trump has also been harping on these themes for a long time, and he’s continued to see his base erode despite that.

 

[Xan]

There were a bunch of photos posted about Donny's Waco speech.  This is the one that caught my eye:

Yeah.  Not a cult.  Sure...

[Alisamer]

I find myself really, really, really hoping that Trump runs as an independent, rather than getting the GOP nomination. Split those votes, people!

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[apple1]

Is there any chance that some of those people know the difference between PROSECUTED and PERSECUTED?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[smittykins]

5 hours ago, apple1 said:

Is there any chance that some of those people know the difference between PROSECUTED and PERSECUTED?

Some of them don’t even know the difference between “indicted” and “indicated.”

[Bluebirdbluebell]

If I had to see it, so do you.

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(Someone I follow on Twitter shared this tweet with the group.)

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

If I had to see it, so do you.

 

(Someone I follow on Twitter shared this tweet with the group.)

I’m defrauded and grossed out by the nipple. It is going to haunt my dreams 

[AnywhereButHere]

5 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I’m defrauded and grossed out by the nipple. It is going to haunt my dreams 

Holy bad design! It’s like a growth that needs to be excised. And I think it’s wall-eyed… 

[Xan]

I've been reading comments from his supporters.  It's fascinating that most of them believe that Donny has been bravely enduring all the slings and arrows just to save the country.  They say that no one else has ever been attacked as viciously as Donald.  They claim that he was an outsider who was cleaning up the swamp and that the Deep State stepped in to stop him.  He alone was ending the flow of drugs, controlling immigration, and putting Christianity first in the country.  This level of delusion is staggering.  

I've honestly never seen him as anything but a con man who is dangerously ignorant about government.  He's obviously a narcissist and probably wouldn't cross the street to help out one of his MAGA followers.  And they think he's as holy as Christ.

There's some chatter about how the MAGAs won't stand for this and that they're "getting ready" but, if they're planning anything, they're keeping it quiet.  I'll be interested to see how many actually show up in NY on Tuesday.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Xan]

What a crowd!  There are tens fives of supporters cheering him on! 😆

[GreyhoundFan]

Campaigning for VP:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is disgusting:

 

[GreyhoundFan]