This is what Trump campaigned on though. This is what he said he'd do. Did people vote for Trump because they thought he was a liar?
His "charm" is that he won't do 3/4 of what he says, the difficulty is figuring out which quarter he is going to enact.
Yes! I know apparently smart people who voted for Trump because they thought that his more extreme rhetoric was merely intended to wind up the left. Like the first time he got elected. Except that this time he had a plan.
This time he (illegally) fired a bunch of them right out of the gate. The Heritage Foundation wasn't caught off guard (and a bit out in the cold) by his success this time, and backed him with a plan. They did it out in the open, the recruiting and a whole lot of specifics about what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it. It wasn't even close to a secret, you could literally go download and read documents, watch interviews of key figures in front of friendly audiences, that kind of thing.
With the Vance pick, you could also easily spot the Yarvin influence & connections and make some guesses about some things. When Elon started worming his way in, it was clear that side of it wasn't just going to be in the head of a VP who can't personally do much, but was going to have traction.
His voters who are now like "WTF?" need to sit down and have a serious think about how they got conned by someone who was standing under a neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing down at him that read "I am conning you! Signed: Donald Trump". Like I'm not sure it even counts as a con, it was so transparent.
Everyone else… yeah.
Meanwhile Trump isn't even able to keep phrases like "rare earth minerals" correct in his head (repeatedly calling them "raw earth"). To be honest 90% of the meeting was him waffling on about how this news organisation was brilliant (because they give him a softball question) and this one was going bankrupt because their rating suck (because they asked a difficult question). You could see Zelensky trying to keep himself from rolling his eyes.
voters are very very dumb for believing him, but he did lie.
Again, I don't think people are stupid. I do think they'll say one some things in mixed company to hide their racism.
This continued labeling of all fiscal conservatives as racists is a key reason Democrats keep losing to an obviously crazy person. Nobody’s going to vote for the party which calls them a racist.
A lot of fiscal conservatives are “middle class” undecided voters who have mortgages and kids to worry about. Unsurprisingly they voted for the party who promised lower taxes over the one which did nothing but accuse them of racism.