Cognitive Dissonance Much?

[Tabula Rasa]

Can someone explain to me how someone can disavow white supremacy and support Trump at the same time?

[Zagadka]

There is a lot more to supporting Trump than white supremacy, and a lot of people will support someone on a single key issue, regardless of others.

[NickyTannock]

A lot of people, unfortunately, support a candidate based on their personality alone and ignore some of the things they say.
When these individuals are polled on their first, second, and third choices for a candidate, said candidates have incompatible plans.
They will then rationalise on policy reasons for their support despite the contradictions.
Add to that everyone else will support a candidate based on their policy positions, but have different priorities to go along with their different beliefs.

[gisiebob]

you could support Mr. Trump on the basis that you believe he is being scapegoated with white supremacy...which I don't think is a wise analysis but is probably an accurate one for some people. sometimes the tribe that you ended up in arbitrarily appears to need protecting because something outside of it is applying scrutiny. understanding them is nothing like understanding us, a survival holdover that makes this sort of thing hard for everyone.

sometimes that is the thing that trips them up and the only thing we can do to help them is to call them us.

[uhtred]

The problem is that when you support a candidate, you get their entire bundle of political positions.    I find that there are no candidates that I can completely support, but I have to vote fore someone.   

 

I don't like the strong socialist leanings of some of the Democratic candidates, but I'll have to accept those if the choice is one of them or Trump.  I can see how someone with a more conservative political bent, might feel that they have to accept Trump's nationalism to get the other policies that they care about. 

[MoviesNMuseums]

There are single-issue voters, who will readily admit trump is Racist, but fear they could not afford the alternative, especially when the alternative is someone who seems to have different values.

 

Rural voters often need the added meat that owning a hunting rifle can provide, or have the sort of large property that might justify a long-arm weapon for home defense.  Gun control advocates tend to be rather tone deaf about those concerns... for example, requiring a distinction between rifle ammo, and handgun ammo when there is none, or calling ARs machine guns, when a majority of single action hunting rifles are ARs.  If I used my guns for anything but target practice, I'd be far less happy with any democratic candidate.

 

Religious christian voters are frequently still ruled by the legacy of Jim Jones and the moral majority.  For a certain type, ending abortion is the only issue.  Others feel that social safety nets somehow detract from charitable giving, or mix their religion with racism, or believe that supporting Jerusalem, or going to War will somehow hasten the return of Jesus Christ.  I dont quite understand those stances, but I guarantee they exist, and are held more firmly, and by more people than progressives care to admit.

 

The wealthy of one sort seem to believe that taxation will jeopardize their position.  With trump being of one sort of wealthy, their support was guaranteed.

 

There are also war hawks, who believe killing off most of a generation will put us back in a better economic position, or that war leads to technological innovation which puts us in a better economic position, or that government funding of tanks, planes, and bullets will improve the economy in some way that peace time deficit spending cannot do.

 

For many voters, it's more a question of who to vote against, rather than who to vote for.  

[AspieAlly613]

It depends on the definition of white supremacy.  If one's definition of white supremacy is "wants to restrict citizenship to white people only, wants to prohibit interracial marriage, in the event that it becomes impossible to feed everyone, supports feeding white people first, etc," then one can support President Trump while disavowing white supremacy because President Trump has yet to propose or try to get support for such policies.