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As soon as the mothership beams down the right marching orders, their brains will turn off and they'll fall in line.

It's happened with every other thing he's done.

They don't support it until he does it, and then when he does it, they'll be ready to die on that hill.

He isn't the candidate people who actually hold on to any principles voted for, because he very explicitly has none, and he expects his supporters to not have any either. The only thing that matters is winning.

This is an old pattern going back a good decade at least in conservative circles.

Everybody ingests at least some of their worldview and opinions from external voices. That's a reality of humans trying to navigate a complicated messy world. But it was really shocking seeing family members hold reasonable view "A", until the local talk radio station sprays out "A bad, B good", and then bam, instant complete retroactive reversal like they never thought "A".

That's not a conservative problem, that's an anyone problem. Most of the liberal zeitgeist has done a 180 on globalism and tariffs this year, as a very prominent example.

The problem isn't that a political party is acting as hive mind, the problem is that the core pillar of conservatism they practice is 'I will use the law as a weapon against you, but I will not ever be bound by it'.

Which is no way to run a society, any I cannot have any respect for its disciples.

It started with the deregulation of radio and telecom in the 90s, and accelerated right around the time of the OJ chase.

I worked on a farm in middle and high school at the time. Every blue collar dude, farmers, truckers, tradesmen all listened to Rush at lunchtime.

It's hard to believe that trump will run in 2028 at the age of 82. assuming he's alive then (not implying assassination but just rather natural causes)

> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term.

They said the same thing on Jan 6, 2021. Trump supporters had a very negative visceral reaction to that day.

But on Jan 7, 2021 the propaganda machine started up again and minds began changing one by one. Today, the very people who were running for their lives on Jan 6 are in support of officially teaching in schools that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats -- the very lie that cause the violence of the day, that caused so many to say "I do not support this". Four years later they voted for it again.

So when I hear tales of a Trump voter who is against something Trump has done, I just remember that they voted for him again after he caused an insurrection against the United States in an attempt to illegally overthrow a free and fair election.

If a voter can find their way to excusing that, they will find their way to excusing a third term. Here's how: "Yeah it's not ideal, but what am I supposed to do? Vote for a Democrat? They would be worse. We are choosing the lesser of two evils." Works every time.

If your hope is 2028, then you are effectively abdicating responsibility for your future to chance, at best.

When 2028 rolls around, the 4 years of straight up corruption, illegality, and power concentration will mean you wont have the tools to enforce your rules.

You are at your strongest, least tired, least weakened now. Today.

There is no tomorrow.

Americans have never lived most of their lives in a banana republic, so its understandable that they act as if there is a continuation of things.

There isn't.

> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it.

What were their thoughts and reactions after Jan 6? Clearly it was not a red line for them, but just curious if you discussed it with them right after.

> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning.

Yeah because it didn't happen (yet). Standard Trump supporter maneuver. If you went back to 2019 and asked them if they'd support someone trying to overthrow the result of a presidential election, you'd get the same visceral negative reaction.

Once it happens, they find reasons why it's okay.

Yep same thing with getting buddy buddy with Putin or saying let's start a violent war to annex part of an EU member state.

A lot of Trump supporters, when questioned in a general context, are very against a LOT of the things Trump has done or is doing.

Then Trump does them, and when questioned about that, they shrug it off.

let's not forget he also doesn't do a lot of things he says that are highly problematic, like invading greenland.

thats not excusing trump supporters but also you can maybe understand why there is a predilection to just hope it goes away (because often it does)

...yet

pretty sure trump has forgotten all about greenalnd and i would bet money it doesn't come up for the balance of his term. the man has the memory of a goldfish

Trump doesn't need a memory. He's being told what to do by Miller, Vought, and the other Heritage/2025 crazies.

They were very, very angry about the Greeland/EU mineral deal, which is why Trump immediately slapped a huge tariff on EU imports.

But Trump only cares about Trump. As long as he's getting attention, being on TV, scamming people, and cheating at golf, he's perfectly happy. He has no long term goals beyond that.

He treats ideas like cattle, not pets. Throws out a lot of seeds and sees if they take root. It creates a lot of havoc because his detractor's analysts have to write a researched article about every seed. Meanwhile he's always got seeds growing.

Yeah it's a clear example of the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle.

Trump can spout random bullshit all day long and neither he nor his supporters care. Meanwhile, all his detractors have to spend mountains of time disproving everything that comes out of his mouth.

That's not the thing I'm talking about though. I'm talking about when he actually does stuff.

Like, I don't understand your point here, I said stuff Trump has done, not stuff he said he's gonna do.

Trump is in terrible physical health, and his cognitive decline will only accelerate. The odds of him making it to 2028 aren't good.

The Republicans have until the mid-terms to either fix the next election or install a no-compromise terror state.

Terrorising the population with ICE, suspending due process, and removing habeas corpus all suggest the plan is the latter. As is the absence of realistic reporting and criticism from a (mostly) captured MSM.

Sooner or later confrontations with ICE will turn violent, and then it gets very dark indeed.

Its nto a captured MSM, its a broken information market. The MSM on the center and left work normally. On the right, theres straight up market capture and collusion with the party.

This is why you can't get a working conversation in america, because the exchange of ideas and information is broken.

Unfortunately this future seems unavoidable.

> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term.

I don’t want to argue against your lived experience, but somebody is buying all those hats and yard signs.

Yeah - I think there’s a very small core of people who genuinely think Trump will win a third term, and a slightly larger core of people who want him to. Then a much larger set of people who are engaging in some very unwise trolling.

I just think it’s telling that all the rabid Trump supporters I know aren’t there. Zero of them want to see him on the ballot a fourth time or otherwise pull shenanigans.

Your account is reassuring to me, yes.

Surely if shenanigans around changing eligibility to vote and maybe a bit of tampering with vote machines (won't be detected if there's no-one around with the authority to validate voting), then it won't matter if Trump has many supporters or not.

I would expect him and his handlers to look to other authoritarian regimes to see how to safely have democratic votes without any chance of losing power.

At this point they don't even know who he'll be running against.

But put a name there, and I guarantee you that they will immediately flip and claim that they have to support Trump, because the alternative is going to be literal communism or whatever.

> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term

This will change in the lead up to 2028. This is a pattern we've observed over and over again with Trump supporters, they draw a line, and once it's crossed they adjust to the new standard without fail. Trump now enjoys more popular support than ever before.

> That’s his best chance to stay out of jail

Absolutely zero chance he goes to jail. Not just because he's a former president and a billionaire, but also because it's a political impossibility. Even assuming Trump can't make a third term happen, and that the Democrats aren't indefinitely disaffected, holding Trump accountable is something that Democrats have proven themselves consistently unable to accomplish, nor do they want to, because it's a losing political agenda.

> He’s going to be old news in late 2028.

That's what they said in 2022.

> a hypothetical Trump 2028 term

Would it be a new term if elections are suspended, or would it just be his second term continued?

Even straight-up hereditary dictatorships like North Korea have elections these days.

I would expect some kind of brief "emergency" suspension followed by rewriting the rules and then a glorious re-election of our Great Leader.

I remember their visceral negative reaction when anybody brought Project 2025 in discussions. Now, of course, Project 2025 is used as the actual blueprint and nearly fully implemented, and they are seemingly OK with it.

So no, these people are not to be trusted, there can be no negotiations, and no further reconciliation until they change their minds. Being "conservative" and "right-wing" is one thing. Being pro-Trump after February 2025 (and arguably January 2021) is nearly a crime.

I think that's genuinely interesting anecdata (even if Trumpists have changed their mind before), but ultimately the executive decides whether they're going to follow the constitution, not the people that originally voted for them and Congress has been utterly spineless when it comes to other things that play badly with the base like trashing the economy.

And on the original topic, whether Trump ultimately decides to enjoy being kingmaker for the next presumptive nominee (someone's got to be pitching him an Apprentice style TV show...) in order to enjoy a happy retirement is moot when the presumptive nominee for Republican candidacy is going to be someone with similar policy and behaviour extremes. In fact, in some respects the prospects for things like collaborative scientific research if someone who espouses Trumpism but isn't Trump are probably even worse due to them being less incompetent and less straightforward to flatter/bribe into declaring that actually $organization or $country isn't terrible wokes or dangerous criminals after all and they in fact have a very strong relationship. Vance seems to believe some of his schtick. Sure, the successor probably won't be favourites to win a free and fair election in which they're saddled with Trump's mistakes and lack his charisma or cult, but if you're doing medium term planning you can't count on that faction being out of power forever

Run the 9/11 playbook again and those morons will fall in line immediately.