Quote:What Trump fans believe about the Russia probe doesn’t matter
Dave Boucher described widespread indifference to the Russia issue. “Talk of Russia, special prosecutors and election tampering won’t change his mind,” Boucher wrote of one voter.
“In Trump country, Russia scandal doesn't resonate,” his article was headlined.
Vox sent a reporter to Michigan. The headline of the resulting article should suffice: “I asked Trump voters in Michigan about the Russia investigation. They said it's fake news.”
“Anyone who thinks the Republican base will abandon President Donald Trump over the latest Russia revelations is sorely mistaken,” concluded Politico after interviewing county-level Republican leaders across the country.
“It’s just all noise to people on the ground here,” a Republican official in Nevada told Politico’s Gabriel Debenedetti and Jake Lahut. “People on the ground are just concerned about job security. It’s almost embarrassing for the media from my perspective.”
Does it matter what people in rural Pennsylvania think? Yes, of course, though reporters should also check in with the residents of housing projects in Memphis, undocumented immigrants in Tucson, even those supposed coastal elites in New York and California who haven’t a care in the world except for where to have brunch.
The more interesting question is why many Trump supporters believe the Russia investigation is a “nothing burger,” when it’s looking every day more like a fatty triple-decker of collusion, conspiracy and obstruction, slathered in enough greasy deception to give our body politic a heart attack.
Turn on Fox News, and you’ll have the answer, with Sean Hannity railing against Deep State plots to take down the Trump presidency and Tucker Carlson suggesting that Trump’s overtures to Russia are reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s collaboration with Josef Stalin during World War II. Alex Jones, the obviously deranged Infowars conspiracy theorist, has suggested that Donald Trump Jr. was engaging in masterly spycraft by meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. Republicans say they distrust the media for peddling “fake news,” then turn to Breitbart News, where blatant pro-Trump propaganda is varnished with a thin sheen of journalism.
Whether initiated by Russia or not, fake news is seeded at the fringes of the all-too-fertile right-wing media ecosystem. Having planted its roots in the soil of 4chan, the misinformation migrates to Reddit, then World Net Daily or Breitbart, eventually making it to the desk of Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade or one of his colleagues at the network. Trump, a devoted viewer, sits by, ready to tweet. You know the rest.
It’s no wonder, then, that people in Tennessee don’t believe the Russia investigations are relevant. Trump is the benefactor of an international misinformation campaign. Many of the honest, hard-working Americans who voted for him are its victims.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/what-tru...nt-matter/
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
~ Erin Hunter