Rump's magical thinking cult re Russia

[sweetroxie]

Salon: https://www.salon.com/2019/04/22/trumps-magical-shifting-russia-story-from-never-happened-to-no-collusion-and-now-who-cares/

This classic study, which laid the groundwork for the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance, can go a long way to explaining the ever-changing story that Donald Trump and his supporters have offered to explain away the Russian conspiracy to interfere with the American election by illegally stealing private emails from Democratic officials. The rationalizations Trump offers have morphed over the past two years, but what remains steady is the fierce conviction of his most loyal supporters that they were never wrong to vote for him and their refusal to accept that he is a corrupt person unfit to hold even a dogcatcher's office, much less the presidency of the United States.

Phase one of the process was flatly denying that the Russian conspiracy even happened in the first place, even as journalists and American intelligence officials were amassing evidence that Russian agents had deliberately stolen emails and used them to stoke conspiracy theories designed, successfully, to suppress voter turnout for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Trump denied the hacking in many ways. In 2016, he flatly denied it was going on or blamed the Chinese government or "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds," rather than Russia. Under pressure from intelligence officials, at times Trump would reluctantly concede the hacking was real, but he would return to the never-happened-or-someone-else-did-it line as soon as he could.

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