Psychotherapist says Trump supporter’s bizarre claim reveals a deeper chasm

Zerrin Mueller, a supporter of Donald Trump, in Clearwater, Florida, U.S., November 3, 2024. REUTERS/Octavio Jones

Twenty-year practicing psychotherapist Elliott Connie, who offers short, easy-to-understand analyses of the brain and how people think, sees a clear example of how words can manipulate people.

The video he highlighted was from the comedy duo known as "The Good Liars," which interviews supporters of President Donald Trump outside of rallies and events. Davram Stiefler asked a MAGA man about Trump handing farmers $8 billion after retaliatory tariffs destroyed their businesses.

The man began by saying he loves that Trump is giving farmers aid, and in the next sentence denounced "socialism," saying that "it sucks."

"What do you think about implementing socialist policies, subsidies and all those things?" asked Stiefler.

"No," the man said. "No, it's bad."

"Are you for the farmers, for the $8 billion to help them? At the time that they need it, to lift them up?" Stiefler asked, and again the man said he is.

"Yeah, they need to help people when they need it, in a time of need," the man said.

"Socialism, though?" Stiefler asked.

"No. Bad."

Connie called the human brain a "fascinating tool" that can be "tricked and manipulated" easily.

"Because if I give you confusion, if I talk to you in a way that I know you don't understand and I talk to you about ideas like in this case socialism and I know you don't know what it is, I can give you the definition for it that I want you to have. The human brain is very fascinating because it actually doesn't look for facts. It looks for comfort. So the more I hear something, the more the brain accepts that repetition as true," Connie explained.

This is why Republicans continue to use words like "socialism" or "communism" when most people don't even know what it means. Even Vice President JD Vance was asked to define socialism and struggled to do so, saying that it was if "you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls' sports."

Connie explained that any politician must lie over and over until it becomes the truth, like Trump, who keeps saying he won the 2020 election.

"So, here's this man who clearly does not understand what socialism is or what it means, but he's been told it's bad over and over and over again," Connie said. "So much so that when a socialist program is initiated to help farmers, he can understand that that's a good thing, but cannot understand that that's a socialist policy. The dissonance, the cognitive dissonance, does not shake him."

It's not a coincidence, said Connie. It's all part of the strategy.

"They're doing this on purpose because they understand a confused mind is a mind that we can upload information that we want into. We can scare them. We can make them anxious. We can give them fear. So that's exactly what you see happening there," he said. "That man doesn't understand socialism at all, but he fears it. He doesn't understand what socialism is, but he knows he doesn't want it. That's based upon his confusion and the MAGA cult telling him what to think about it."

That sense of fear that is generated is similar to another case of a MAGA mom whose children are trying to talk her out of what they think is a cult. Chatting with a cultism expert, it became clear that she didn't support the overwhelming majority of the policies of the Trump administration, but was still voting for them.

Ultimately, the man rejects the word while supporting the policy. Connie called it "concerning" how often he sees this and urged people to "call this out as often as possible."

"The only way to combat this thinking, this ideology is with wisdom and awareness and intelligence and information," he closed.

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