I have often heard it repeated that the impeachment process in the House of Representatives and an impeachment trial in the Senate are political procedures and not judicial processes, and that is of course true.  However, given the evidence indicating that Donald J. Trump used the power of his office for personal gain and then obstructed the investigation of his crime, there is no question in my mind that any good prosecutor could quickly get a grand jury to bring in bills of indictments.  There is also no question that a good prosecutor could bring Trump to trial with the full expectations of a successful prosecution.

However, impeachment is a political process and those elected Republicans defending Trump are totally invested in one strategy, ensuring Trump’s base doesn’t desert him, and desert them in the process.  Everything they do and say is directed towards that objective. Whatever they may think of Trump privately, they are terrified that he will turn his supporters against them in their next election.  So they support Trump to the hilt using every line of defense they can think of, regardless of how feeble they may be, to give Trump supporters what they want to hear, and the process keep them in line.  And they are not alone in this endeavor.  They are just part of the greater Trump echo chamber.

When you think about the situation we have before us it boggles the mind.  Here we have a man who has used the office of the presidency to enrich himself, to alienate and desert our best allies, to embrace dictators and our worst enemies, to start tariff wars with our trading partners, to break international agreements destroying our nation’s credibility, to destroy our pollution standards and endanger our planet, to put children in cages and separate them from their parents, and now is obviously that he is guilty of the bribery of foreign leader and breaking election laws as well as obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress in defiance of the Constitution.

Yet, an average of the latest polls indicates that 41.6% of American voters still approve of the job this man is doing.  42.3% are against the initiation of the impeachment inquiry and 44.2% don’t believe Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Equally mystifying is are the facts that 4.9% of American voters don’t have an opinion whether Trump is doing a good job in office, 5.3% don’t have an opinion about the impeachment inquiry, and 8.1% don’t know or don’t care whether or not he should be remove from office. (Polls information via FiveThirtyEight website.)

Like you I wonder how a sizable portion of the voters in this country continue to support this toxic individual. That support can be partially explained by the increased partisanship on the part of American public and their elected officials.  By the time that Nixon resigned polls indicated that 57% of the voting public believed that he should be removed from office and only 24% still supported him. More importantly, it was moderate Republicans in Congress who convinced Nixon that they could no longer support him. However, few moderate Republican elected officials remain.  Though Trump’s offenses are far more serious than Nixon’s attempts to coverup illegal activity, it is unlikely that Republican representatives and senators will vote against the current occupant of the White House.

However, it is more than the forced loyalty of Republican congressmen which is keeping a large segment of the population loyal to Trump despite his blatant attacks on decency, the country’s security, and our democracy.  I have heard it said several times that if Fox News had been in existence in its current form when Nixon was president, he would never had to even consider resigning, and I believe that is likely true.

Along with Republican congressmen and the Trump himself, the political commentators on Fox News and talking heads on conservative radio stations make up a large part of the pro-Trump echo chamber in which Trump’s supporters can exist without coming up for the air of truth and unpleasant facts.

We human beings all want to hear that which conforms with our existing perceptions and values and we dislike having to deal with facts and opinions which conflict with our existing views.  It takes a force of will for a person who seeks to be honest with his/herself to be open to learning “inconvenient” information.  Many would rather instead revert to a world where nothing exist to conflict with their deeply held beliefs.  That is why many Trump supporters never emerge from the Trump bubble where they get all their information from Fox News and conservative radio commentators and from the tweets of Trump himself.  In order to understand why Trump approval numbers appear to be stuck in concrete, we need to recognize what Trump supporters experience in his echo chamber.

Trump supporters likely believe the most important information they receive every day comes from the man himself.  Aside from the reporters who subscribe to Trump’s Twitter account in order to stay informed on what he says on his primary method of communication, you can bet the vast majority the 67 million people eager to indulge in Trumps multiple daily tweets is made up of his most fervent supporters.  Of course, what he provides them is always self-serving and often untruthful.

When Trump is not engaging in self-aggrandizement on Twitter he plays the plays the martyr, especially since the specter of impeachment began to haunt him. His “woe is me; the Democrats and the deep state is out to get me” complaints are blatant requests for his followers to be unwavering in their support.

Fact checkers have calculated that the number of Trump’s lies have increased from 5 a day previously to 22 a day since the decision was made to start the impeachment inquiry. He has repeatedly referred to his call to the president of the Ukraine “perfect” and labeled the impeachment hearings “a fraud” and “a hoax” and “an attack on our country”.   He has repeatedly contended that the whistle blowers accusations were inaccurate despite the fact that numerous witness have verified every aspect of the whistle blower’s complaint.  In addition he has illegally call for outing of that person who is protected by law. Trump has even berated career civil servants in his administration who honored their constitutional duties to testify before Congress about what they knew about his misdeeds.

Now it is easy for you and me to sit back and discuss how blatantly disingenuous Trump is when addressing his followers and how foolish they are in lapping it all up as if it were gospel from on high, but that is because we are well informed.  However, try to for just one moment to understand (or misunderstand) the world from their prospective of fervent Trump supporters don’t want to hear anything negative about their guy, so they wall themselves of from any negative information.  They want to believe, and Trump is telling them exactly what they want to hear.  Is it any wonder that they never stray from the fold?

However, Trump’s statements and tweets are just one aspect of the greater Trump echo chamber.  Nixon resigned because his “I am not a crook” defense was ultimately deemed inadequate.  Trump therefore needs plenty of help to keep his followers in line and he gets it.

Fox News had no choice but to coverage of the impeachment hearing live along with CNN and MSNBC. They knew their viewers were interested and they didn’t want them going to other networks to watch.  However, they are doing their best to minimize the impact that the actual truth may have on their viewers.

For instance they to undercut the witness appearing before the House Intelligence Committee by flashing derogatory statements on their screen during the testimony.  When Trump appointed ambassador to the Ukraine Bill Taylor, a Vietnam veteran, recipient of the Bronze Star, and life long career diplomat took the witness chair, the network flashed three statements on their screen:  “President Trump has called Taylor a Never Trumper”, “The White House has called Taylor’s earlier testimony triple hearsay”, and “Republicans say Taylor has no firsthand knowledge about Ukraine aid.”

Then on their prime time lineup their political commentators did their best to discourage their viewers from watching the hearings live.  The overall message was the hearings are “boring”; and why would you watch such a “hoax”.  Following the testimonies of Ambassador Kurt Volker and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, Sean Hannity called that day’s witness testimony a “huge dud”.  Tucker Carlson said the Impeachment hearings were “like an HR meeting held in hell, the entire Ukrainian impeachment saga was boring, hard to understand and apparently goes on for an eternity, never ends.” Greg Gutfeld: “My advice? Skip it and show up next November and give these clowns a hearing they’ll never forget.” Laura Ingraham said, “Tylenol PM has nothing on Schiff.” She went on to call the hearings the “impeachment farce” which is “mind-numbingly dull”.

Of course, their comments were not confined to simply discouraging viewers from watching the proceedings.  Hannity called the hearings “worst show earth” and said the Democrats are “a national disgrace” who are guilty of “an abuse of their power.” He went on to state that “The Democrats are corrupt idiots who look dumb, bad, stupid, and shallow” and called Adam Schiff a “congenital liar”. Tucker Carlson stated that Harvard law professor Pamala Karlan, an expert witness who testified before the Judicial Committee, was “incapable of clear thinking or wise judgement”. “What a mediocrity, what a moron.”  “This lady needs a shrink.”  A guest on Laura Ingraham’s show, Joe diGenova, referring to the impeachment hearings said, “What you’re seeing is regicide, this is regicide, by another name, fake impeachment,” (Impeachment is like killing a king, umm… he might have something there.)  He went on to call the whistle blowers “suicide bombers that the Democrats have unleashed on the democratic process”.

Of course these are just a few of many examples; commentators in Fox News prime time lineup spend all time continually spouting and enhancing the latest Trump line. However, when when Trump supporters are not watching Fox, like when they are driving around in their cars listening to their radio, they still have access to Trump’s echo chamber.  They can  listen to conservative talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity (yep, he is on the radio too).

Limbaugh, “The impeachment of Donald Trump is not because he’s a bad president. It’s not because he’s broken the law. It’s not because he’s committed any impeachable offense. It’s because they don’t like him. It’s because they hate him. It’s because they hate you (his listeners.)”  O’Reilly on Glenn Beck’s radio show:  “So that’s why I started this with one word: fiasco. And it is a fiasco. And I believe that most Americans now will tune it away. Number one, it’s incredibly boring … this is a bunch of garbage.”   On that program both Beck and O’Reilly pushed the debunked conspiracy theory agreeing that Trump was not digging for dirt on Joe Biden. Instead they claimed he was “doing what any other president would have done in the same situation… looking for information regarding potential collusion between Ukraine officials and Democrats in the 2016 election”.

Okay, now while it may be difficult, put your self in the place of a fervent Trump supporter.  He has been told again and again the “lamestream media” puts out nothing but lies about Trump and he certainly doesn’t want to hear anything that conflicts with his deeply held beliefs.  So he exists totally within the Trump echo chamber and gets all of his current information from Trump tweets, Trump owned elected officials, Fox News, and the Trump lap dogs on the radio.  Is it any wonder that those people that would reply in polls that they approve of Trump’s job performance, that they believe that the “deep state” is out to get him”, that they don’t want him impeached and removed from office, and that they will certainly vote for him in the next election?  When they live completely in the Trump bubble and never hears the truth, how can they ever expected to believe it.

Cajun    12/6/2019