President Donald Trump’s speech to congress was greeted very well by Republicans, conservatives and many independents. Democrats and leftists, on the other hand, are having a difficult time trying to come to terms with the rejection of their party by the American people. Rush says in this excerpt from his show yesterday that he thinks the Democrats were shell-shocked in part because they have not really been paying attention up to this point. During the speech, many of them were actually listening for the first time to what President Trump was saying and they didn’t know what to do or how to react.
I would suggest that what we are seeing here is the result of groupthink. When this phenomenon takes over, the members of a given group filter out any information that might threaten or undermine the prevailing viewpoint. This has the effect of providing a “safe space” for the group but at the cost of ignoring the real world around you. And when the real world intrudes into your artificial construct, as it inevitably must, the results are what we see here on the faces of Democrats who are lost and confused and who cannot integrate this new information into their already existing fantasy world.
So, anyway, the speech began, and some of these people who had been emailing me for the previous two hours were ecstatic. They were sending me emails like, “He’s really taking it to ’em! I’m so relieved. My God, he’s jumping right down their throats. This is just awesome, right on, right on, right on.” Just overwhelming relief and happiness that what they had heard was not happening.
And in fact, it was the exact opposite of what they had heard. Yeah, Trump alluded to it’s time to compromise. The real line of the night to me — and it’s hard to pick just one. But when he looked at these Democrats sitting on their hands and told them that these trivial, trivial disagreements… It’s time to move past this and start thinking big. By the way, as an aside, I have to tell you, folks, as I was watching the speech last night — and I really mean this.
The first realization of this happened when Trump mentioned a deal he had made with the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, that involved improving circumstances for female business owners and entrepreneurs. The camera cut to Fauxcahontas, Elizabeth Warren, who was sitting next to Kirsten Gillibrand, and they looked at each other, like, “What? Wuh wuh wuh wuh what did he just say? What?” And they started consulting notes and chattering at each other. And a thought hit me.
I think one of the things that happened last night — and not just in that chamber, but I think in many parts of the country… I really believe this. I think the Democrats in that chamber may for the first time actually have heard Donald Trump say what he thinks and believes. I think they are so devoted to their media, I don’t think they spent much time actually watching Trump rallies, I don’t think they spent much time listening to what Trump was saying at his rallies, because if they had, there would not be this degree of anger and shock and disbelief.
But we know how cocooned these people are. We know how removed they are. They live in their own bubble, and they live in a bubble that has very thick boundaries to protect them from anything they disagree with. They don’t expose themselves to things they don’t agree with; they just characterize it based on their own bigotry and their own prejudice. And as the Democrats were shown on TV last night in these sporadic moments when the camera cut to ’em, yes, I noticed them sitting on their hands, and I noticed them looking really childish.
