I first visited Trump Tower in Manhattan about 20 years. Donald Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice, was one of the most popular programs on TV at the time. Although I’d never watched the show, it was impossible to be unaware of the Trump persona at that time – a glitzy American billionaire and media gadfly. I remember being distinctly unimpressed by the lobby of Trump Tower. As I recall, it had a few retail stores and restaurants, but lacked the true glamour and architectural beauty that I’d seen earlier that day at nearby Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.
It was that lobby at Trump Tower a decade or so later where Trump would launch his 2016 presidential campaign. And Trump returned to the lobby again yesterday to launch a half-hour diatribe about his just-completed trial in which he was found guilty of 34 felony charges related to hush-money paid to an adult film actress, just before the 2016 election, so she wouldn’t go public with details of an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump years earlier.
If you’ve ever been to or walked by Trump Tower, you know it’s on Fifth Avenue. And whenever I’m in New York and strolling along Fifth Avenue – I was there again just a few weeks ago – I always remember one of Trump’s most famous and prescient quotes.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump said back in 2016. “It’s, like, incredible.”
Trump has always understood the mindset of his core supporters, long before any media pundits and political scientists could dive into the psyche of Americans who stand by their man despite criminal indictments, impeachments and countless other personal and business scandals.
The hours after the guilty verdict in his hush-money trial has seemingly proved that Trump is once again right about his ability to keep voters. His campaign team reported a record fund-raising day on Friday.
Why do people still support Trump and other politicians with obvious personal flaws?
Minutes after the guilty verdict, we published a great article by marketing researchers Eugene Y. Chan of Toronto Metropolitan University and Ali Gohary of La Trobe University who say the reasons for such blind support is part of a cognitive process called “moral decoupling.”
This is just one of several Trump verdict stories our network has published over the last few days. For your weekend reading, I’ve assembled many of them – as well as a personal favourite of mine from our archives that talks about how the “rule of law” has impacted politics over the decades.
Have a great weekend. We’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.
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