Catherine Rampell has a superb opinion piece in the Washington Post. Read the whole thing if you can. Below I'm providing two graphs from the piece and the accompanying explanatory text.
Americans - especially, but not exclusively, Trump voters - believe crazy, wrong things
"About half of Trump voters also believe that President Obama was born in Kenya, even though their once-birther candidate has since disavowed this conspiracy theory:"
"Trump voters are unlikely to buy the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia hacked Democratic emails in order to help elect Trump, a view widely held by Clinton voters:"
So -- what's it all mean? Well, it's already been shown that Republicans fall for fake news stories more than Democrats, Republicans believe in conspiracies more than Democrats, and Republicans band together more than Democrats on issues where ideology is more important than facts (like climate change, repealing Obamacare, and cutting taxes to stimulate economic growth, i.e., "trickle down" economics). So it's no surprise that Republicans are playing follow-the-leader on the question of the Russians hacking into and influencing the election in favor of Trump. And it's no surprise that having to believe that Obama was in illegitimate President, half of them still believe he wasn't born in the United States.
So, as we go forward, Republicans will believe what the President says, even if that isn't remotely supported by facts. And that's not good for the country.
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