One of the most frequently repeated narratives of the last few years has been that most of Donald Trump’s support comes from a far-right fringe of MAGA extremists.
These would be roughly the same people whom Hillary Clinton unforgettably described in 2016 as a “basket of deplorables”. According to her, they are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic.” As she put it, they are “irredeemable.”
Last month, Hillary Clinton poured more fuel on the narrative of Trump’s supporters being fanatical radicals in an interview with CNN. This is what she said:
“And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump who has no credibility left by any measure. He’s only in it for himself. And when do they break with him? You know, because at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen.”
But the contention that Trump’s support comes primarily from dangerous MAGA zealots is demonstrably untrue.
To see its falsity we only need to look at the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Donald Trump gathered over 74 million votes. This was considerably more than the number obtained previously by any other US presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat. Most notably, Trump took nearly five million more votes than Barrack Obama who had previously held the record for the most votes ever received in a presidential election. Obama’s historic haul stood at 69 million votes he earned during his 2008 run which inspired great enthusiasm among large portions of that American electorate.
It goes without saying that Trump’s record-breaking number of votes must have come from Americans across different demographics, not just from some far extremist fringe. No fringe would, of course, be numerous enough to account for 74 million votes. What Trump achieved in 2020 was, in fact, a broad popular support. Indeed, more blacks, Hispanics and women voted for Trump than for any previous Republican presidential candidate.
As an aside, the only other candidate who ever received more votes than Donald Trump in 2020 was Joe Biden. This constitutes one of the most astonishing feats in American electoral history. Not least because Joe Biden, being an elderly person in the time of COVID, hardly campaigned. He made few public appearances, and those were generally poorly attended at times bringing in only a few hundred people. In contrast, Donald Trump kept filling stadiums. Furthermore, Joe Biden – who often seemed perplexed and disoriented – showed little energy and displayed virtually zero charisma. His physical and cognitive decline were painfully obvious to everyone who cared to look. It can be safely assumed that Joe Biden must have been the most unexciting, boring, and confused presidential candidate in the history of this nation.
How could a man like him receive a record number of votes – more than even the charismatic, energetic and hope inspiring Obama during his 2008 run – remains a deep mystery. In the absence of a miracle, widespread election fraud seems to be the most plausible explanation for Biden’s spectacular ballot success, especially in light of the fact that the landscape was flooded with tens of millions of mail-in ballots and 46 percent of voters (most of them Democrats) voted by mail or absentee.
But to return to Donald Trump, the 2020 election showed that he was a popular candidate who enjoyed wide support across a healthy cross section of American society. His great popularity was confirmed only a few weeks after the election when the 2020 Gallup Poll found that President Trump was – to the great chagrin of the assorted left – the most admired man in the United States. Yes, you are reading this correctly: the annual Gallup poll conducted just six weeks after the 2020 presidential contest found that Donald Trump was the most admired man in the country.
As you may know, the annual Gallup Poll is no right-wing exercise. The previous winner was Barrack Obama who had previously come on top for twelve straight times even as most on the right grew increasingly disenchanted with his performance and legacy. To illustrate just much Gallup tends to cater to the left-wing psyche, the 2020 winner in the women category was none other than Michelle Obama who had, by the way, won for the third straight time. The fact that Trump managed to top the list shows just how widely popular he was even among those demographics who had routinely expressed admiration for the Obamas.
To put that poll in further perspective, the cognitively declining and physically fragile Joe Biden – who had just “won” the election with a record number of ballots – received a mere 6 percent of the Gallup vote. In other words, Americans admired Trump over Biden by a factor of three. To put it another way, in December 2016 the American people found Trump three hundred percent more admirable than Biden.
This may come as a shock to most readers, because the mainstream misinformation media made sure that the highly revealing results of that 2020 annual Gallup were never widely reported. If you have never heard about it, you can check out that year’s poll and its results at this link.
The lopsided results of the 2020 Gallup throw further into doubt the legitimacy of Biden’s electoral victory. The question that needs to be answered is this: How could Joe Biden – a befuddled, cognitively impaired, un-campaigning and uncharismatic candidate – take a record ballot haul (considerably exceeding even that of his charismatic former boss Obama) and beat broadly popular and widely admired Trump?
Another way we can see the sheer absurdness of the establishment’s false narrative that Trump’s support comes primarily from fringe fanatics is by looking at some recent polls.
A September ABC News/Washington Post poll, for example, showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden 51 to 42 points. That’s a margin of nine points. This means that rather than being a fringe candidate, Trump is favored by the greater part of the American electorate.
What is remarkable about this poll is that it was conducted by ABC News and Washington Post, two partisan, deeply dishonest misinformation outfits whose polling samples are invariably skewed toward Democrats. Come election time, Republican candidates nearly always score higher than their slanted polls predict. The euphemism for this statistical and journalistic malpractice is that Republicans routinely “outperform” the polls. The poll treachery was employed in full measure against Trump in both 2016 and 2020 where the polls kept showing Clinton and Biden as hands down favorites. In fact, in both election cycles there was even talk of potential landslides in favor of Democrats. On August 16, 2016, for example, the Washington Post ran a piece titled “Is Clinton Headed for a Landslide. Here’s one reason it could happen.” Among other things, the author cited a fake NBC News/Survey Monkey Tracking Poll which had Clinton up by nine points at 50 to 41.
Given the left’s usual poll machinations, it is probable that these days Trump is up by more than nine points over Biden. That the American people should feel this way is not at all surprising. It is enough to look at Joe Biden’s disastrous policies and mental condition to see why Americans would prefer the former president by such a wide margin. Thus, if an honest election were held today, Donald Trump would win handily, perhaps even in a landslide. This is because he enjoys a healthy backing of the majority of American voters.
In light of the polls and election results, how can anyone claim with a straight face that support for Trump largely derives from a small fringe of MAGA extremists? The truth is that the bulk of Trump’s support comes from Americans across the demographic spectrum. It is normal, everyday Americans who admire, support and vote for him in such large numbers.
The contention that Trump’s base consists of mostly far right radicals is just another mainstream canard on par with the other false narratives such as that BLM is a racial justice organization, Covid shots are safe and effective, George Floyd was killed by a racist cop, Putin invaded Russia because he is mad, and President Zelensky is a saintly champion of democracy.
It is Joe Biden, in fact, whose support is being increasingly confined to an extremist fringe. That fringe is being propped up and cultivated by ruthless profiteering billionaires and the corrupt corporate media who keep relentlessly spreading misinformation and false narratives every time they open their mouth.
