Russia’s vicious, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is dividing Trump’s fan base.
I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, Ukraine, a peaceful country, was attacked because Putin doesn’t like its democracy and wants to grab its territory. He’s bombing apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, and cultural sites, and his troops are looting libraries and burning textbooks on Ukrainian history. (See story here.)
Many of Trump’s fans may not know these details, because they’re not the kind of people who read real news.
Some are indifferent: “It’s not our business,” Peggy Bright, 57, said.
Which you may not agree with, but is a legitimate argument … as far as it goes. But then she adds, “I’m not a Putin lover, but if it was here in America, I would expect our president to take care of our people, just like I would expect him to take care of their people. I understand what Putin is doing.”
Except what Putin’s doing isn’t “taking care of his people.” Bright is, at best, ill-informed.
On the other end of the Trumper spectrum is Alina Roberts, who says, “I love America, love our troops, but I think we need to send them there.” She wants the U.S. to fight Putin and remove him from power. To do that, we’d have to invade Russia, and while Biden doesn’t like Putin, he likes World War 3 even less.
In the middle, Melanie Collier says, “It’s hard to say at this point whether we should be more involved or less involved. Of course, everybody’s got compassion for the people of Ukraine who are involved in this in an innocent way, but we still don’t know exactly what’s going on with the leadership,” referring to the Ukrainian leader who said, “I need ammunition, not a ride,” and earned the world’s admiration by standing up to Putin and fighting the invaders to a standstill.
There’s also a Putin fan club within Trump’s fan club, people like Chad Gailey, who doesn’t want to help the Ukrainians and says, “Putin as a person, honestly, I think he is a strong president, much like Trump.” Never mind that hot air isn’t real strength. And as a Vietnam veteran, to me Trump the draft dodger looks like a weakling, and I’m sure glad I never had to be in a foxhole with him.
Then there’s the Blame America set. For example, Andrew Johnson says, “We kind of forced the hand of Russia to do it,” so we have to help them. In other words, the Devil made Putin do it, and fighting him off is doing God’s work, or something like that.
In other words, there’s a wide variety of views among Trumpers about Ukraine, none of which are well-informed or make any sense.
The unifying theme tying them all together is these people don’t know how to think.
Read story here.