. All right.
This is really important.
This is so important.
I'm even going to take my Sharpie out for this.
I am really glad to have some time today to do a deep dove on videos from a focus group
with Trump supporters.
This was hosted on Monday night, two days before the inauguration of Joe Biden.
We've been talking about what do we do now?
About 75 million trumpets.
How do we deprogram and it's really an important insight into the mind of the Trump voter and
what we're up against for these next two and four years.
This is a focus group done by Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican focus group guy who
has been anti Trump for some time.
And if we are to understand how to deprogram Trump, we have to understand how they ended
up believing the things they believe.
And this is the perfect window through which to do that.
So let's get right in.
We're going to have lots of analysis of this, but let's get right into the first clip and
let me know whether you find this type of segment useful.
Raise your hands.
If you think that Donald Trump actually won the election, if all the votes are counted
accurately, who thinks he won it?
All but one of you.
OK, Denise, where's the number one source for news for you?
I love watching Fox News.
I love listening to the news because I drive a lot for a living.
And I right now, by the way, I'm living in Washington, D.C.
I'm staying with my daughter these past two weeks.
And it's a nightmare here.
It's a nightmare.
But I listen to the news.
I listen to the news and what I just heard recently, that they're comparing us to the
KKK, one of the newscasters that any Republican.
It's disgusting.
OK, so Denise thinks Trump one.
She likes to listen to Fox News.
Washington is a nightmare.
And she heard that she, as a Trump supporter, is being equated to the KKK because she voted
for Trump.
So notice that there's a total lack of awareness that the reason Washington on Monday was a
dystopian nightmare with troops on every corner is because of other Trump ists who violently
rioted on January 6th.
Then she says, I've been watching Fox News, which has not actually made the connection
that Trump incited the pro Trump mob that did the rioting.
So it's really important to see how her beliefs are directly informed by how Fox did or maybe
better said did not cover the riots.
The link between what you watch and what you believe is very, very clear.
This is not trivial.
Let's continue.
Randi, what do you get your news from?
What do you watch?
I used to watch Fox News up until the election.
So now I kind of just looking online.
I was getting it from Twitter, but I deleted my Twitter account once they censored the
president.
So now I don't really know where to get my news because I don't know what's true and
what's not.
I don't know what to believe from anywhere just right.
So there's a lot there.
That's just 27 seconds.
But listen to how much telling information is released there.
She used to watch Fox, but not anymore.
Increasingly common among trumpet's, she used to get news on Twitter until they censored
Trump.
So notice that even where she used to get her news, that's not news.
Fox News isn't news.
Twitter itself isn't news, although there can be news articles posted to Twitter.
But I would be interested in seeing who these folks are following on Twitter.
So it's a lack of media literacy.
For years I've been pointing out, rather than just arguing with people about the facts,
if we establish a foundation of media literacy, you insulate people from even falling prey
to a lot of this stuff.
This is a perfect example.
This is exactly what I've been talking about for a decade.
Then a guy yells that she should be getting her news from Breitbart and Newsmax, another
self-parody.
Let's continue.
Wendy, where do you get your news from?
Is Max formerly from Fox?
Occasionally I'll watch the five.
Is radio so another example of a former Fox viewer and she says, sometimes I will watch
the five on Fox News again, the five is an opinion show on Fox, which she says she's
getting news from.
This is a case study in everything I've been saying about media literacy for the last decade
on the show.
Now, Frank Luntz asks why so many of them have stopped watching Fox News.
Take a listen to Harris.
Stop watching what's since the election.
Here.
Charles, why don't you stop watching Fox?
I started I start watching Fox a couple of years back.
I just I just saw them sliding further and further and further to the left.
And I have CNN for that.
I have MSNBC for that.
I don't need Fox to go to the left.
So I get my news from Breitbart News, Max.
Meredith, why did you stop watching Fox?
Oh, me?
I didn't so much.
And when you say news, I know where I get my opinions, but news, you know, unless I
see it with my own eyes anymore, I don't believe anything.
It's pretty terrible, actually.
I don't know.
How do you know the election was stolen if you don't believe anything?
I don't know if it was stolen.
I know that that when somebody wins an election at four AM and people start voting, that's
just not how we do things.
Fox is two left for the first guy.
He went to Breitbart and Newsmax.
Meridith doesn't believe anything anymore.
That's an example of one.
Skepticism goes too far.
Healthy skepticism is good.
Unquenchable skepticism leads to you believing nothing, and it's completely unproductive.
So this is really instructive because our beliefs about these people, they might seem
like satirical caricatures, but it's literally what they're saying and what they believe.
Now, if you think that this is useful, I do want to hear from you.
If you think these to me, this is endlessly instructive and I hope it is for the audience.
So now Frank Luntz gets into beliefs about a so-called stolen election and now the focus
group participants start getting more agitated.
That's all we ever wanted was an investigation we were told to bring along and nothing happened
here.
Just keep moving.
Don't look.
Don't ask questions.
Yeah, it's absolutely fair that we ask questions when we see a guy who came in from his damn
basement, had twelve people show up at his rallies, gets eight million votes.
Come on.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
So I'm just and I look at numbers all day and I, I, when I went to bed at night, Pennsylvania
had we were we were up and then when I woke up, nine hundred thousand votes all of a sudden
went to Biden and he won by what, like three percent in Pennsylvania.
It doesn't make sense.
Like if you look at the numbers, they don't make sense.
And so then I listened to the hearings, all the hearings, I listened to all single people
talking about it.
Something happened.
Congress is not doing their due diligence to investigate this.
They don't want to investigate it.
Right.
Because it'll take forever.
It'll take forever.
It'll take that will take forever.
It may take their power back.
And then and then when they played when they played a game like they were going to do something,
they weren't going to do anything.
It's like for the next election, we can come to only one conclusion from listening to that.
And unfortunately, it's that the country is in real, true, deep, serious trouble, like
really, really deep.
Remember talking about hearings?
Those were legally irrelevant hearings where no one was under oath.
None of their claims were verified, period.
And that's why she thinks it was rigged and it keeps going and they start getting each
other more and more wound up.
But we got to live with the results of this one that was stolen.
Right.
Why should we vote?
Tell me why you look at Georgia.
Exactly the same process was used in Georgia and whoop de do surprise.
You can do surprise the.
Well, look at what we, Nancy, to a with H.R. one, her first bill of the new Congress is
to sign into law the very things that they used to steal this election year and now they've
got the majority to pass it.
They're going to change the rules and keep power.
That's what I fear for about my children, is that this is not the America that we the
we grew up in because they're going to change the rules, just like Adolf Hitler did, just
like Fidel Castro, just like Chavez is going to happen.
Are you sure you really want to compare Joe Biden and the Democrats with Adolf Hitler?
You said it's not the methodology.
The methodology.
Absolutely.
Methodologies.
They're so they're as predicted.
They think not only was Georgia stolen from Trump, it was also stolen in January from
Kelly Lefler and David Perdue.
It's not even a possibility for most of these folks that maybe Trump lost and Lefler lost
and Perdue lost.
And then, of course, he raises a comparison between twenty twenty one Democrats and Adolf
Hitler and others in the focus group like it.
Others in the focus group say, yes, that's a correct comparison.
So this this is really stunning stuff.
And if you're wondering how do you deprogram that?
I don't have the answer that the point here is for us to understand how deep the programing
is.
It's horrific.
Then the topic is, how do you feel about the January 6th Trump riots?
Are you proud of what they did with the capital?
I am sympathetic to what they did at the capital.
I am absolutely sympathetic because I feel like I have nowhere to go after this last
election.
What am I supposed to do?
I can't vote them out.
They are going to refuse to be voted out, no term limits, no balanced budget, they're
going to refuse to be voted out.
I'm sympathetic, I think the congressman should be I think the congressman should be pulled
out and each of them face a tribunal and face punishment for what they how they betrayed
our country over all these years.
Every one of them should have to face the American people for what they've done or agree
with.
Right.
I'm curious how many people I agree with right now should have a reckoning come know that,
right?
Not to.
I want to make it clear this is agree with Frank from Florida, not me.
Yeah, I know things coming from.
I do.
He wants a reckoning.
He wants to know why these people have betrayed us and he wants them to stand up there, say,
yeah, I betrayed you for money or power or a Chinese guy or whoever it is in that one.
I actually am unsure who they're referring to in terms of having a tribunal for members
of Congress.
To me, if you say, David, who needs to face consequences, it's the Republicans that supported
the Trump election coup attempts.
But I have a sense that those Trump ists are talking about Democrats facing a tribunal.
I don't know.
And in this next clip, they say more about the allegedly fraudulent nature of the election.
But then there's a really interesting guy here, Jim, from Michigan, who doesn't think
the election was stolen and quit the Republican Party.
So listen to him.
This is a really important moment of clarity.
And in the reckoning is normally an election.
But we don't have that anymore.
No, don't have that anymore.
Powerless.
You know, I think you're listening to all this and.
I left the Republican Party about about three weeks ago because of what I saw at the Capitol.
I was embarrassed.
I was embarrassed for the president.
I voted for him twice.
I had my lawn signs out.
I had my flag up.
I'm embarrassed.
I'm embarrassed because look at covid Hall.
That's totally out of control right now.
You don't hear from this man anymore.
He's pences has got to go around.
And what he did to Vice President Pence threw him under the bus.
I will never see that the other way around.
You know, they just could not do anything under the control, but not do anything.
Pence did what he had to do.
Pence had two months.
Pence had two months before he came out and gave that letter.
He had two much to say what he thought.
And he he betrayed us, just like the Democrats and the Republicans have had two months and
he remained silent.
So that's Jim from Michigan.
Jim says Trump failed on covid he abandoned his own vice president and Jim is embarrassed.
So here's the takeaway.
That's a focus group with 12 Trump voters, 11 of them, just 48 hours, not even 36 hours
before the inauguration of Joe Biden are completely disconnected from reality.
And they seem to be beyond reach 11 of those 12 people.
I don't even know how we reached them.
One of the 12, Jim, from Michigan actually saw what happened and saw things for what
they are and said, I can't be a part of this.
This is wrong.
And he sort of seems to have deprogrammed himself.
That's really rare.
And the fact that one out of 12 people did that is very important.
That may be the proportion that we're working with in terms of what portion of these people
can reasonably be deprogrammed.
And as you can imagine, one out of 12 is not enough.
It's not enough to fix the problems that we have in this country.
It's not a great percentage.
So hopefully this is really good work, actually, by Frank Luntz.
Hopefully this helps us to understand the issue.
And the more we understand it, the more of a shot we have at fixing it.
And we'll be talking more in the coming weeks about how it can maybe be fixed.
But as you can see, that's an uphill battle.
That's a real uphill battle.
We'll have more on this on our Instagram page at David Pakman show on Instagram.
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