• perishthethought@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Does anyone have a link showing what actual American conservatives are saying about Trump’s quote? How are they trying to defend this? (Not the media - actual people, on the street, as it were)

    • MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      They will likely never even know about this. Right wing media is incredibly insulated. They live in a different reality most of the time. They’re programmed to shut out and discount any and all information that doesn’t fit with their worldview.

    • Elderos@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      They will just repeat what Trump said with a shit-eating grin. There is no original thought going on there.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I am more than a little bit doubtful that they’ve heard anything about it. On the Fox News website, I can find exactly two articles about it:

      • One titled “Trump’s NATO comments trigger fierce media and European opposition: How serious is he?,” which focuses more on European response to the message (and in fairness does have some pretty strong words for Trump’s statement), but was written by Howard Kurtz, who is generally considered a “RINO” or worse by rank & file MAGAts. That article currently has about 500 comments.

      • And one titled “White House responds to Trump encouraging Russia to do ‘whatever’ they want to some NATO members: ‘Unhinged’,” which focuses (as suggested by the headline) more on the White House’s response to Trump’s statement than on the statement itself, before going on to provide an apologia for Trump’s remarks in the form of a weird, pseudo-self-righteous paraphrase of a section of the NATO charter. That article currently has about 4,500 comments.

      The big comments on both articles are either regurgitations of Trump’s statement itself, regurgitations of the apologia in the second article, or a spectrum from “he was just using a rhetorical device to make a point” up to “I support him, countries that don’t pay should be punished.”