{"id":37148,"date":"2019-05-25T00:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T00:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37148"},"modified":"2019-05-25T00:00:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T00:00:22","slug":"trump-wasnt-kidding-apparently-about-strength-of-his-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37148","title":{"rendered":"Trump wasn&#8217;t kidding, apparently, about strength of his support"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23Trumpbase%20%232020election%20%232016election%20%23POTUS&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Character-Matters.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-37149\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Character-Matters-300x117.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Character-Matters-300x117.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Character-Matters.jpg 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many of us rolled our eyes in disbelief when Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said he could &#8220;shoot someone on Fifth Avenue&#8221; and not lose any votes.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, some Americans applauded. They laughed. They cheered. Others of us were, um, <em>appalled.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then the candidate got elected. Now the boast doesn&#8217;t seem quite so farfetched, given the strength of the president&#8217;s firewall in Congress against the amazing array of examples of his utter lack of character, his lack of decency, his disregard for the law, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s political base remains wedded to him at some level approaching 40 percent. They give him a pass as he tells Congress to stick where the sun doesn&#8217;t shine in search of answers to serious questions about whether the president obstructed justice. They stand and cheer this clown as he hurls juvenile insults at his foes.<\/p>\n<p>They have shrugged as he called the late John McCain a &#8220;war hero only because he was captured&#8221; by the enemy during the Vietnam War; they laughed as he mocked a New York Times reporter&#8217;s physical disability; they didn&#8217;t care that he acknowledged groping women; the base didn&#8217;t flinch while he denigrated U.S. intelligence analysts&#8217; view that Russians interfered in our 2016 election; they didn&#8217;t mind when he attached moral equivalence between Klansmen and Nazis to those who protested against them.<\/p>\n<p>I could go on. You get my drift.<\/p>\n<p>What was seen and heard as a preposterous assertion on the campaign trail no longer can be dismissed. Donald Trump rode that solid base of support to a victory no one saw coming. He is relying on that base now as he campaigns for re-election.<\/p>\n<p>He has endorsed a hideous Twitter message that slanders House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suggesting she is a drunk.<\/p>\n<p>The base doesn&#8217;t care!<\/p>\n<p>One of the many Democrats running for president this time, Pete Buttigieg, recently lamented how Republicans used to care about &#8220;character.&#8221; They no longer care about that.<\/p>\n<p>They stand foursquare behind a president who lacks character at every level one can imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Utterly amazing.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23Trumpbase%20%232020election%20%232016election%20%23POTUS&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us rolled our eyes in disbelief when Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said he could &#8220;shoot someone on Fifth Avenue&#8221; and not lose any votes. Sure, some Americans applauded. They laughed. They cheered. Others of us were, um, appalled. Then the candidate got elected. Now the boast doesn&#8217;t seem quite so farfetched, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37148\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Trump wasn&#8217;t kidding, apparently, about strength of his support<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[74,7225,1424,1941,3178,8487,8048],"class_list":["post-37148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-2016-election","tag-2020-election","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-pete-buttigieg","tag-trumps-base"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37150,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148\/revisions\/37150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}