No, I don’t think he actually convinces that many people that his lies actually are true. But what he does is convince a lot of people it is ok to repeat the obvious lies and act as if the lies are true, even though you know damn well they are not, because if they were true, you could use them as an excuse to get your way and hurt an awful lot of people, which normally your conscience would prevent you from doing. And the memory of grandma and how ashamed of you she would be if she heard you repeating lies like that and hurting people… you can blame all those feelings of guilt and shame on those others, who you are hurting, and the more guilty you feel, the more you should hurt them. Because if people holding what should be respectable positions think it’s ok to act like that, maybe it is ok to act like that and maybe grandma was wrong about how she told you good people ought to behave all those years ago.
That is trumps “magic”. The ability to get people to follow pure hatred and evil.
Trump’s “magic” is that he’s a walking power vacuum. Trump cares about attention and his basic animal needs. Everything else around him is up for grabs. That’s why the GOP loves to push figureheads as their presidents – what better way for those who were never elected president to exert their twisted wills on an unwilling country?
Think of how many members of the clergy act in a manner outside their deities’ doctrine, and they’re not typically making 174k, plus benefits. Graham’s also run for president before, he may have convinced himself that if/when Trump finally gets arrested, he’d have another shot at it. Not discounting blackmail and/or bribery as a possibility.
No, a whole lot of them really do believe his lies are true. Or in the very least believe that reality is subjective and a strong-willed person can make it whatever they want it to be.
If most of them really thought Trump’s proclamations were objectively false then they wouldn’t be doing things like “going maskless in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more Americans that World War II.”
Graham’s facial expressions in this interview bear a strong resemblance to those of Ricky Gervais in The Office when his character is lying.
But that’s exactly what repetition does. (if not for himself, then certainly for others.)
As the philosopher Costanza tells us, it’s not a lie if you believe it.
OK, Graham just published a blatantly disloyal statement. Trump will tear into him tomorrow, Lindsey will make another Florida trip to suck up to his liege, and come away believing Trump will help him. Trump’s knife in his back will follow.
Clever. You’ve created an image that is potentially sacrilegious to all people everywhere.
Also, using the expression "Everyone knows it… ". Nope, you don’t get to dictate what I know. I hope I’m wrong but I suspect some people misconstrue this kind of lazily applied NLP technique for an authentic voice of authority. Same applies with the endless variations of “…like nobody has ever seen before.” , which employs bragging as a means to make statements sound more like facts. Presto!
‘Stone them with stones?’ Almost sounds like they fixed the text to stop disappointing hippies. But that’s Leviticus, and he don’t give a shit.
Seems the whole document needed an editor. ‘Express your ideas more clearly’ would be among the notes.
It’s not exactly a secret, he’s just doing what most xtian conservatives would like gay people to do, keep himself deep in the closet, ask forgiveness if he’s found soliciting, but not actually living the life that would make him a happy and fufilled person that offends them so…
I think the translation of his mysterious answer is essentially the same answers you would have gotten from German politicians in the early 1930’s.
“People hate us, even the people who vote for us hate us. People like him. I don’t know why people like him, but do we throw that away; even if he is a fascist loose canon that could possibly destroy the world as we know it? Not on your life, we’re riding this hog.”
“More diverse”
Italians and Irishmen are now welcome!
Perhaps he is alluding to Joseph de Maistre.
What inconceivable magic is it which makes a man always ready at the first beat of the drum […] to go without resisting, often even with a kind of eagerness (which also has a peculiar character of its own), in order to blow to pieces on the field of battle his brother who has done him no wrong, and who on his side advances to subject him to the same fate, if he can?2
(As quoted in Isaiah Berlin’s "Joseph de Maistre and the origins of Fascism, in Crooked Timber of Humanity)
Here, de Maistre is admiring the bloody spirit of revolution, and wishes that a counter revolutionary movement could tap into the same energy.
Word on the street is Lady G is wearing a wire, collecting info for the SDNY. All the best people are saying this. 
I assume the “something” is whatever Trump talked to him about on that golf game where he went from anti-Trump to Chief Priest of the CheetoChurch.
He claims tRump was his “friend” before the riot and is still “friend” after. For anyone with standards, trying destroy the most powerful democracy on the planet seems like a darn good reason to end a “friendship”.
One of Blondie’s former members, Gary Lachman, wrote a fascinating book on the occult connections with DJT called Dark Star Rising (Lachman is pretty into subjects relating to the esoteric and mystical).
I’ve been saying for a while now that Trump is a powerful (if unwieldy) black magic user of the extreme service-to-self orientation. Such idjits tend to attract others to their circle who envy their wielding of such power and wish to benefit from it themselves. Graham is certainly admitting what his drive is…
