CNN journalist Anderson Cooper is one media figure, to judge by the exchange below, who got the memo about the MAGA communications strategy of replacing facts with how people “feel” about an issue — and then citing polls showing those feelings, as if many misinformed people feeling a certain way makes their belief a proof of fact.
Example: People felt very angry, as they should have, about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating family pets. Polls demonstrated that anger and Republicans cited those polls. The only problem is that the Haitians were not eating the pets — it was a false story — yet GOP heavyweights like VP nominee JD Vance continued to cite polls showing the feelings.
When former California Lt. Governor Abel Maldonado tried the tactic on Cooper in the exchange below, Cooper kept pinning him down, continually attempting to distinguish — for the audience — fact from feeling. Maldonado makes the claim that most former Trump administration figures, when they have broken with Trump, do so out of sour grapes and not on principle.
This clip perfectly encapsulates how “normie” Republicans tie themselves in humiliating knots and wrap themselves in a cocoon of lies to attempt to justify their support of someone who they know in their hearts is scum of the earth. https://t.co/DNYd7PHAhm
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 17, 2024
Maldonado — what critic Ron Filipkowski identifies as a “normie Republican” –proposes that the likes of Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. John Kelly are merely fickle, once having believed that Trump was a “good” president and “serving at his pleasure” — only later to change their minds after a “disagreement.” (Milley and Kelly have come out aggressively against a second Trump presidency.)
“A lot of these people,” Maldonado says, “when they’re working for [Trump], he’s a good guy. Donald Trump hasn’t changed in his whole life.”
Cooper objects: “I don’t think they’re saying he was good when they were working for him. They left and they’re saying what they saw.”
Cooper asks: “You believe highly decorated General Milley, General Kelly, who is the chief of staff, whose son died serving this country — you believe that they are making stuff up?”
Maldonado equivocates, claiming “I’m not saying that.” Cooper: “But you are.” Maldonado: “When they were in the White House, President Trump was a good president.” Cooper: “They’re not saying that.”
Flummoxed on the facts, Maldonado offers that he is “talking about the way I feel.”
Cooper: “But how you feel is not factually correct.”
And then Maldonado tries the trick, saying: “I really believe it’s correct and I think a lot of people feel it’s correct, I mean, the polls say it.”
Cooper: “But what people feel and what polls show is not factually correct.”
Also not correct, it follows, are the anti-migrant feelings of people who have been wrongly told their pets are endangered by their migrant neighbors. The feelings may be real, but they are falsely induced.