What can a person do when they find out they’ve been wrong for years and living in what can best be called a waking state of total delusion?
Well, if you’re a hardcore supporter of failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, you find a new delusion to replace the one shattered by the arrival of reality.
Such is the case with videotaped testimony given by former Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, which was presented last week as part of the January 6 House Select Committee’s public hearings.
Barr called Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen from him delusional, remarking:
“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”
According to the York Dispatch, that led some of the MAGA faithful to suggest that Barr was “playing a role,” while others saw other, darker forces at play:
One post that spread widely this week suggested Barr was paid by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted by Trump and his supporters with baseless claims of vote rigging. “From 2009 to 2018, DOMINION PAID BARR $1.2 million in cash and granted him another $1.1 million in stock awards, according to SEC filings. (No wonder Barr can’t find any voter fraud!),” the post read.
Wrong Dominion. Barr was paid by Dominion Energy, a publicly traded company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, that provides power and heat to customers in several mid-Atlantic states.
And then there’s Ivanka, Donald’s favorite child and the one he’s been lusting over since she was 13, though the perverted thoughts may have started years earlier.
In her testimony, Ivanka said she also didn’t accept her father’s claims that the election had been hijacked and stolen by Democrats, especially since Barr told the whole thing was complete bullshit.
How did the Trumpers handle that one? Simple. They either said it was part of an elaborate ruse or wasn’t real in the first place. It was all done with computers:
Jordan Sather, a leading proponent of the QAnon theory, claims both Barr and Ivanka Trump lied during their testimony on Trump’s orders, part of an elaborate scheme to defeat Trump’s enemies by confusing Congress and the American public.
“I can just imagine Donald Trump telling Ivanka: ’Hey, go to this hearing, say these things. Screw with their heads,’” Sather said last week on his online show.
Some Trump supporters dismissed Ivanka Trump’s testimony entirely by questioning whether any of it was real. That’s another common refrain seen on far-right message boards. Many posters say they don’t even believe the hearings are happening, but are a Hollywood production starring stand-ins for the former president’s daughter and others.
“She looks different in a big way,” one poster asked on Telegram. “CGI?”
It must be exhausting to be a Trump supporter. One day you have to believe his lies and the next you have to deny reality altogether. It’s enough to drive a person crazy, though for most of the Trump faithful it was a very short ride.
