I don’t know how much hope there is that any sincere Trump supporters will actually see the light. Shapiro’s comparison of these people to those trapped in abusive relationships is, sadly, very apt. I would venture to guess that every single person reading this post knows at least one person who has fallen for an abuser and who could not be persuaded of his or her mistake until it was too late. In the case of the Trump candidacy, however, it is almost (!) certainly going to be the case that the eye-opening moment, the dawning realization that one has tied oneself to a monster, is not going to happen. I.e., Trump is not going to become President. So I fear greatly that the True Trump Believers will simply hang onto their fantasy, sighing and saying how great things would have been if only all those nasty NeverTrumpers had gotten on board the magic bus.
Let me emphasize once again, in a refrain that is getting a little tiresome but which I’m going to keep on repeating until the election: a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for a known quantity. It’s a vote for a situation in which you’re sitting down to contract negotiations with someone whose positions are known, whose feet you can hold to the fire, whose every comma and apostrophe you need to check. (This image is dependent on Congress being able to hold onto its Republican majority, a hope that is becoming more and more unlikely as we march toward Nov. 8.) Many sincere Trump supporters say, well, we know Hillary is awful, so we can at least hope that Trump will be better. We’ll just ignore what we indisputably do know about him. We’ll just stick our fingers in our ears and march up that aisle, tying our fortunes and our reputations to a disaster.
Well, Shapiro says all this better than I can,, so here’s his article:
”You Can’t Pretend Trump’s Flaws Away”