Yet he is the biggest distributor of fake news on the planet.
Have you checked out the https://www.theonion.com/ ? ;)
If he said tomorrow that aliens had visited him and told him to exterminate all Mexican-Americans, his supporters would be, 'sure, sounds legit.'
I agree that many people are blind to soundbites from politicians. Well if my guy said it, it has got to be true.
Trump's people are master manipulators.
I think many politicians across the board get a free pass from their followers, if Trump says he is gonna build the wall and Mexico will pay for it or Bernie is going to make college free - people take this at face value and say America will be better off if they agree with the policy. They don't think that building a big fuck off wall is expensive and expensive to patrol for the rest of time, and writing off education debt or paying universities/colleges instead of the students taking out debt, isn't free, it's just a reduction of expenditure somewhere else or an increase in taxation somewhere to cover it. [robbing peter to pay paul] Left or right can't wave a magic wand no matter no much the followers want. But followers look at the promise and never the opportunity cost of it.
I'd say all American presidents are guilty of crimes against humanity (civilian deaths from unmanned drone attacks etc) , but Dubya Bush/Trump are considered more evil than someone like Obama, because Obama had a boatload more charisma.
This is essentially why I stopped supporting one political ideal over another. I'm sure I'm still open to manipulation, but at least this way I don't automatically love something 'my guy' says and hate the 'other dude' simply because of the sides they represent.
Well Dubya is responsible for devastating an entire region for personal gain, Trump seems to be overtly racist and a liar.
Obama has got charisma and was not as gung-ho as Dubya and is more eloquent than Trump. However I've still heard him referred to as Barack O'Bomber.
However I take your point, we are much more ready to forgive someone we see as smart and attractive. Look at Bill Clinton for instance :-)
Cg
Yeh it's difficult to be behind politicians or a set political idea over something else, like you say, when often even on opposing parties there is close enough to equality of (bad) outcome.
I read theory on free market economics and I think small libertarian government would be the fairest, at least in theory. I don't really see that happening in any country in the near future because it is such a small or non-existent part of politics in most countries.
One idea I have for politicians, probably never happen as well, is for a politician to only promise what they can deliver. Some form of smart contract where pay is withheld if they promise something they don't deliver upon. A more serious form of that would be imprisonment for lying to the public for non-delivery. In Ireland the government said they would abolish an additional tax on income from the 2008 financial crisis called USC ( universal social charge), and in the past 4 years it has been reduced but not abolished. If the political party said they had 10 goals or 20 or 50 or whatever to deliver within 4 years of power, and they had to do it, then politics would be meaningful or at least a bit of craic when politicians are carted off to jail. It's a solution to promises that sound good ( that get someone elected) but are unrealistic.
I don't think that this type of smart contract would ever become a reality but that sort of execution on policy would be great.
Yeh I've heard the criticisms of Obama like that before as well. It's a clever nickname :) but agreed the people with the most charisma can get away with a bit more than everyone else