How hush money conviction has helped galvanise Trump supporters

In the first 100 days of his office, starting January 20, 2017, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team found that Donald Trump made 492 false or misleading claims in remarks, interviews, prepared speeches, news conferences and statements and on Twitter and Facebook mostly on jobs (94 times), immigration (68) and foreign policy (67). In total, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his term.

Trump’s latest barrage of lies was against his historic conviction in the hush money trial with the jury finding him guilty on all 34 counts. His lies ranged from the case being allegedly rigged to President Joe Biden’s alleged link to the New York state prosecution.

The thunderous verdict should have ideally damaged Trump’s reputation, sunk his popularity and alienated supporters. However, the conviction hasn’t much impacted how Americans, especially Republicans or Republican-leaning voters, view him.

WinRed, the Republican online fundraising platform used by Trump’s campaign, crashed within an hour of the verdict after securing donations worth $800,000. The campaign raised around $53 million in only 24 hours. Israeli-American casino billionaire Miriam Adelson and Silicon Valley investors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya are ready to bolster Trump’s election war chest.

The percentages of Americans with favourable and unfavourable opinions of Trump, 41 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively, are unchanged in surveys conducted just before and just after the conviction.

In fact, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll conducted just before the verdict found that a conviction would not affect 67 per cent of voters, including 74 per cent of Independents. Moreover, 25 per cent of Republicans said that they would even more likely vote for Trump if he were convicted.

Post-conviction, Trump supporters displayed their steadfast loyalty. Hundreds of them converged on Trump Tower, blasted rock music, honked and waved giant Trump flags, including one that read “TRUMP OR DEATH”.

Several images of upside-down US flags in protest appeared online with one such flag seen outside Trump Tower.

Right-wing commentators and podcast hosts supported the inverted flag after Trump’s conviction. Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation posted the image of an upside-down US flag flying next to a flag with its logo.

Astonishingly, fewer Republicans think it’s illegal to pay hush money to influence an election and more of them support a felon as a president.

A post-conviction poll conducted by YouGov between May 31 and June 2 showed that 19 per cent of Republicans now choose being “a criminal” as among the three traits least desirable in a president compared to 34 per cent in February . The percentage of such Independents has also dropped from 52 to 38 points.

The share of Republicans who said that convicted felons should be allowed to be president rose from only 17 per cent in April to 58 per cent in over two months. Even among Americans overall, the percentage rose from 14 to 34 points.

From 49 per cent a few months ago, the percentage of Republicans willing to vote for a candidate convicted of a felony under some circumstances has jumped to 74 per cent.

Similarly, the percentage of Republicans who thought Trump should be allowed to serve as president if he were to be convicted of a crime in the hush money case has increased from 51 to 78 after the conviction.

Moreover, only eight per cent view Trump’s conviction as the most important event in the 2024 election so far.

Though a May Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 10 per cent of Republican registered voters were less likely to vote for Trump after the conviction, 56 per cent of them were unaffected and 35 per cent more likely to support him.

Similarly, 56 per cent of Independents were unaffected, 25 per cent less likely to support him and 18 per cent more likely to vote for him.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted from May 31 to June 1 showed a similar trend. Despite 49 per cent of Americans saying that Trump should end his campaign because of the verdict, 47 per cent feel that the charges against him were politically motivated.

Even 45 per cent of Independents, who are an important vote bank, and 51 per cent of double-haters think that the trial was politically motivated despite 52 per cent and 67 per cent of them, respectively, believing that Trump should end his campaign.

The poll also showed that 72 per cent of Republicans, 6 per cent of Democrats and 23 per cent of Independents view Trump favourably after his conviction.

There are two reasons for this unwavering support for Trump, who has been indicted in three other cases, faces other legal troubles and is the first former president to be convicted.

Trump gets away with ‘Blue Lies’

Trump’s lies rallied his support base and didn’t seem to affect his approval rating even during his presidency. It’s preposterous that he continues to lie, but millions of Americans still support him.

The reason is Trump’s Blue Lies.

Blue Lies are told to serve the interests of a group or community and they bring its members closer.

According to Kang Lee, a developmental psychologist at the University of Toronto, “Lying in the name of the collective good occurs commonly. Such lies are frequently told in business, politics, sports and many other areas of human life.”

In a study titled ‘Lying in the name of the collective good: A developmental study’, he writes: “These lies are so common that they have acquired a specific name, the ‘blue lie’—purportedly originating from cases where police officers made false statements to protect the police force or to ensure the success of the government’s legal case against an accused.”

The best example of Blue Lies is the Iraq War. Then-President George W Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld lied to Americans that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs that threatened the USA and he was connected with al Qaeda. They wanted the support of the public, who willingly believed them because of the 9/11 horror.

Another example of Blue Lies is why most Americans “seem to accept that our intelligence agencies lie in the interests of national security, and we laud our spies as heroes. From this perspective, blue lies are weapons in intergroup conflict,” writes Jeremy Adam Smith, the editor of Greater Good magazine, in the Scientific American journal.

“For millions and millions of Americans, climate change is a hoax, Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlour and immigrants cause crime. Whether they truly believe those falsehoods or not is debatable—and possibly irrelevant. The research to date suggests that they see those lies as useful weapons in a tribal us-against-them competition that pits the ‘real America’ against those who would destroy it,” according to Smith.

Trump has weaponised a majority of Republicans by convincing them that the Democrats, especially Biden, want to snatch jobs and give them to foreigners, immigrants cause violence and the Department of Justice is on a witch-hunt against him. Trump’s lies have polarised the country with his supporters believing that the fictional “Deep State” is out to target them and their ‘messiah’.

Therefore, when Trump lies during the campaign trial that 82 per cent of Americans think that the 2020 election was “rigged, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared in February alone, Biden wants “to quadruple your taxes” and has “implemented a formal policy that illegal aliens who intrude into the United States are granted immunity from deportation”, his supporters believe him because jobs, taxes and immigration deeply affect them.

All such Trump Blue Lies have been exposed and his false claims debunked by PolitiFact, a nonprofit fact-checking website operated by the Florida-based Poynter Institute.
The homepage of Trump’s website has the following words displayed in bold and caps.

“THEY’RE NOT AFTER ME,
THEY’RE AFTER YOU
…I’M JUST STANDING
IN THE WAY!”

Exhorting supporters to join in “our (rather his) unstoppable mission to Make America Great Again (MAGA), the MAGA Movement says, “The American Way of Life is under attack while career politicians destroy our economy and sabotage our nation’s incredible potential. We will take our country back from the corrupt Washington establishment and return power to the American people, where it belongs …Together, we will save lives, save jobs, and save America.”

Similarly, the WinRed donation site of Trump National Committee JFC, a joint fundraising committee of Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. and the Republican National Committee, galvanises his supporters with unfounded claims and lies under the section ‘BREAKING NEWS’.

Trump alleges that he is a “political prisoner”, was convicted in a “rigged political Witch Hunt trial” and “did nothing wrong”.

“Crooked Joe Biden needs to get the message—right here, right now—that his chances of a 2nd term END TODAY!” Trump encourages his backers to immediately push back in a “massive” way and make Biden “regret ever coming after us”.

In the book The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning , Dan P McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern, explains why Trump supporters believe in his lies. “… many of his supporters, like Trump himself, do not consider him to be a person—he is more like a primal force or superhero, more than a person, but less than a person, too.”

Anger also plays a crucial role. Trump has used the anger of his supporters against economic conditions and crime. In such a scenario, an angry voter looks for self-interest and has the least concern for others. They lie, deceive and show unethical behaviour to promote themselves and form a bond.

When a leader like Trump promises justice, redressal of grievances of angry voters and a better future, he becomes a cult personality or a messiah.

For example, when Trump tells supporters, “I am your justice … I am your retribution” and pledges to “totally obliterate” the “Deep State”, voters rally around him.

According to Smith, research has shown that “this kind of lying seems to thrive in an atmosphere of anger, resentment and hyperpolarisation.

The divide between Republicans and Democrats isn’t mere political; it is ‘Us vs Them’, a deep polarisation caused by Trump.

“Many Americans associate themselves with their party at a deep, visceral level, sometimes in a more or less pronounced way than they realise or report in explicit measures,” writes University of California, Merced, assistant professor Alexander G Theodoridis in his research . “This automatic association is very much related to the ways in which voters evaluate and interpret the political world.”

Smith further highlights this divide, perpetuated by Blue Lies. “When we divide people into groups, we open the door to competition, dehumanisation, violence—and socially sanctioned deceit.”

Smith writes that party identification “is so strong that criticism of the party feels like a threat to the self, which triggers a host of defensive psychological mechanisms”.

Americans’ ignorance, lack of trust in media

In the world’s oldest democracy, where 21 per cent of adults were illiterate in 2022 and 54 per cent had a literacy below sixth-grade level, political ignorance and the lack of knowledge of the Constitution aren’t surprising.

A June 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that only 40 per cent of Americans know who chooses the president if the electoral college is tied.

If neither candidate gets a majority of the 538 electoral votes, the election is decided in the House of Representatives with each state delegation having one vote. A majority of 26 states is needed to win.
Only 40 per cent of Republicans/Republican-leaning Americans and 41 per cent of Democrats/Democrat-leaning Americans know about the tie-breaker.

The polls also showed that 34 per cent of Americans don’t know who Controls the House and 37 per cent are unaware of who has the Senate majority.

Voters aren’t even fully aware of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” it says.

Only 57 per cent of Americans correctly identify one of the rights the First Amendment guarantees.

The 2023 annual Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey , conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, also revealed ignorance about the US Constitution.

Seventy-seven per cent of the respondents could recall only freedom of speech in the First Amendment. Only 5 per cent could correctly name all five rights while 30 per cent could name three or four rights. Forty-six could name one or two rights while 20 per cent couldn’t correctly name any.

Shockingly, while 66 per cent could name all three branches of government, 10 per cent named two of the branches and 7 per cent only one—17 per cent couldn’t name any branch.
Therefore, when Trump alleged in 2020-21 that the presidential election was stolen from him via rigged voting machines and mail-in voting fraud, it wasn’t surprising that a majority of his ignorant supporters believed him, leading to the January 6 Capitol riot.

Four years after the January 6 attack, the percentage of Americans who believe in Trump’s 2020 election “Big Lie” increased from 29 per cent to 32 per cent, according to US nonprofit and nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute’s recent American Values Survey .

Ninety-two per cent of Americans who most trust far-right TV news and 65 per cent who most trust Fox News believe that the election was stolen. Even 38 per cent who do not trust TV news and 14 per cent who most trust mainstream TV news have the same view.

The public’s lack of trust in mainstream media has also helped Trump in his scheme. An October 2023 Gallup poll found that only seven per cent of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media and 27 per cent have “a fair amount” of trust.

A poll conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Bipartisan Policy Centre in December 2023 showed that 36 per cent of Americans learn about election news and information from social media with 44 per cent relying on Google, 31 per cent Facebook and 29 per cent YouTube.

Americans don’t proactively search for election information. Instead they are more likely to learn about elections on social media or watching a news channel. Moreover, 41 per cent said that browsing or reading posts is their primary source of election information. Besides, 52 per cent engage in political discussions or share political content on messaging platforms, which are flooded with fake news, misinformation and disinformation.

Trump used Facebook to spread election disinformation and incite the January 6 violence. Still, a September-October 2023 Pew survey showed that Facebook tops social media in regular news consumption with 3-in-10 American adults visiting the platform.

Though 45 per cent of Americans prefer news outlets to social media for basic facts about an issue, in-depth and up-to-date information, opinions on it and how it impacts them, 34 per cent value both sources equally, according to a March 2023 survey by Pew.

Trump also succeeds in spreading false news and disinformation due to the overconfidence of a majority of Americans who think they can identify false news, especially on social media, and unwittingly circulate it.

In a May 2021 study , the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that overconfidence might be an important reason for explaining how false and low-quality information spreads through social media.

The authors found that 90 per cent of the respondents feel that they are above average in their ability to discern false and legitimate news headlines.

“Three in four Americans overestimate their relative ability to distinguish between legitimate and false news headlines; respondents place themselves 22 percentiles higher than warranted on average,” the study reads. “This overconfidence is, in turn, correlated with consequential differences in real-world beliefs and behaviour.”

Overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioural data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial.

The most worrying revelation was that individuals least equipped to identify false news are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it further.

“If people incorrectly see themselves as highly skilled at identifying false news, they may unwittingly be more likely to consume, believe, and share it, especially if it conforms to their worldview.”

The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.