Field Note: Inside the Fractured Minds of Trumpers.

From "Ted" to the Times' focus group, the same question: Are they lying, deluded, or something worse?

Do you remember my old friend Ted? The one with the law degree and the chip on his shoulder? I wrote about him last week - you can read it here. He’s a Trumper. Well, he wrote to me again about Trump and how I am so misguided. Trump is a hero in Ted’s mind. Of course Ted should know better, but he has chosen not to.

In his latest missive, a 1,500-word email reads like random pages from a nervous breakdown anthology. He called my writing a “hobby.” He suggested I need therapy. He devoted an entire paragraph—an entire paragraph—to speculation about my bedroom preferences.

All while accusing me of “raising the temperature.”

Somewhere, Freud is taking notes.

Here’s the thing about Ted: He won. His guy is back in the Oval, probably eating a Big Mac while signing executive orders with a Sharpie. Congress is redder than a MAGA hat factory. The courts are stacked like a Vegas blackjack deck.

Ted should be doing a victory lap. Instead, he’s writing unhinged emails at midnight, insisting that everyone who disagrees with him is “completely divorced from reality.”

The lady doth protest too much, me thinks. Or in this case, the gentleman doth email too much and think too little.

What do the Teds of America actually see when they look at this country? I got my answer when the New York Times convened a focus group of eleven Trump supporters—a sort of séance for the politically possessed.

“If you had to describe Donald Trump’s second term in one word,” the moderator asked, “what would it be?”

“Great.” “Amazing.” “Awesome.” “Excellent.”

It was like reading a 5-star Yelp review for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Fantasic would sail with them again.

Eight of eleven gave Trump an A. Not a B-plus, not an A-minus. An A. In their minds, the man is delivering a master class in presidenting.

Where is the reality check and what exactly are they seeing?

The Economy: A Beautiful Fiction

“Prices are now starting to come down for gas and food and stuff,” offered Sherry, 65, of Nevada.

No they are not.

“I do all the grocery shopping for my house, and I see prices have gone down,” said Linda, 50, of Michigan.

She does not. Or rather, she does do the shopping, but she does not see what she claims to see—unless her supermarket exists in a wormhole to 2019.

Isaiah, a 30-year-old real estate agent from Texas, explained that “inflation has come down. So gas is cheaper. Groceries are cheaper.”

Isaiah sells houses for a living. He works with numbers. And yet he does not understand that inflation going down is not the same as prices going down. It just means they’re going up more slowly. A car slowing from 80 to 60 is still moving forward, Isaiah. You’re still going to hit the wall.

The tariffs these same focus groupers cheered have jacked up consumer prices by 17 percent on imported goods. The average American household is paying $1,900 more per year. But the vibes say prosperity, so prosperity it is.

Only Jessica, 33, of Connecticut, broke from the trance. “Prices on everything are insane,” she said. “I don’t even look at my 401(k) anymore because I don’t really have any hope that I’ll retire.”

Jessica was the skunk at the garden party, the girl who mentions the iceberg while everyone else compliments the orchestra.

She gave Trump a C.

Immigration: The Euphemism Games

“He’s trying to help out with getting illegals out,” said Holly, 42, of Georgia, using the preferred terminology of people who find “undocumented” too humanizing.

Illegals. It’s a word that does a lot of heavy lifting. It transforms a grandmother who’s lived here for thirty years into an abstraction. It makes the four-year-old citizen whose father was just grabbed by ICE disappear entirely.

But even in this coven of true believers, a few witches felt a twinge.

“ICE is pretty big in our area,” said Shanna, 28, of Utah, “and I think can be more forceful than maybe is necessary.”

“A little heavy-handed,” agreed Heather, 55, of Louisiana.

A little heavy-handed. That’s how you describe a masseuse, not a federal agency brutalizing communities. But Shanna and Heather have seen something that troubles them, and they’re doing that very American thing of acknowledging the problem while minimizing it into meaninglessness.

This focus group happened before Minneapolis. Before the tactical gear and the occupied streets. One wonders if Shanna would upgrade “a little heavy-handed” to “somewhat Gestapo-adjacent.” Or if she’d just find softer words.

Venezuela: The Disconnect Olympics

“I think what he did with Venezuela was the right thing to do,” said Sherry.

“Those people were suffering,” added Jessi.

Daniel compared it to “us rebuilding after World War II.”

Right. Sending troops into a sovereign nation to kidnap its president is exactly like the Marshall Plan. If the Marshall Plan had involved Navy SEALs and rendition flights.

Let’s be clear about what happened: America invaded another country, grabbed its head of state, and flew him to Miami for trial. Whatever you think of Nicolás Maduro—and there’s plenty to think—this has no precedent in American law. The War Powers Resolution does not cover it. The post-9/11 authorization was for people who attacked us on 9/11, and last I checked, Maduro was not flying planes into buildings.

But here’s where it gets crazy.

These same people who cheered the Venezuela adventure were upset over Greenland.

“What gives him the right to go in militarily and take it?” asked Bill, 62, of Minnesota.

“That’s just the same as Putin doing to Ukraine,” said Daniel.

“Exactly, it’s another country,” agreed Heather.

I’m sorry—what? Like I said crazy.

Bill wants to know what gives Trump the right to take Greenland. Excellent question, Bill! It’s the same question one might ask about Venezuela. But Bill didn’t ask it about Venezuela.

Daniel says Greenland would be like Putin invading Ukraine. Daniel is correct. Invading sovereign nations is bad. Unless—apparently—the nation is Venezuela, in which case it’s the Marshall Plan.

Heather agrees Greenland is “another country.” So is Venezuela, Heather. You might recall discussing it three minutes ago.

Venezuela: invasion good. Greenland: invasion bad. The difference? Maduro is a “bad guy,” in Holly’s formulation. Denmark is... what? Too blond to bomb?

They’re not articulating a principle. They’re articulating an appetite.

The Unity Delusion

Jessica, our lonely C-grader, expressed hope that a future president might “bring both sides a little more together.”

“There are absolute lunatics on both sides,” she said, “and they tend to be the loudest.”

Ah yes, both sides. One side tried to overturn an election and built gallows for the Vice President. The other side wanted to expand healthcare. Absolute lunatics, the lot of them.

Jessica wants unity. She also wants the deportations to continue, the tariffs to stay, the foreign leaders to keep getting kidnapped. She wants the aggression without the division. She wants to win without anyone losing.

She wants, in other words, a pony that doesn’t poop.

So here’s the question that haunts me: Are these people lying or do they believe this?

When Linda says prices are falling, does she know she’s wrong? Has she looked at her receipts and decided to say the opposite? Or has she stared at the numbers until they rearranged themselves into something more flattering?

When Daniel compares Venezuela to the Marshall Plan and Greenland to Putin’s war crimes in the same conversation, does he hear himself? Do these two thoughts ever meet in his brain, or do they exist in hermetically sealed compartments?

When Ted cites constitutional provisions that don’t exist, is he lying? Or has he genuinely replaced the law he studied with the law he prefers?

I’ve decided the answer is: yes. All of it. Both.

They’re not lying like con men, fully aware of the gap between words and reality. But they’re not delusional in the clinical sense either. They’re something more unsettling: people who have chosen their conclusions and are retrofitting their perceptions to match.

This isn’t madness. Madness is involuntary. This is a choice—a deliberate un-seeing, a systematic refusal to perceive what’s plainly visible, executed so thoroughly that it eventually becomes invisible even to the one refusing.

Jessica can see her grocery bills. The others can see theirs too—they’re just choosing to report different numbers. Shanna and Heather can see ICE cracking skulls. They’re choosing to call it “a little heavy-handed.” Ted knows how to read a statute. He’s choosing to pretend he doesn’t.

They have the tools. They’re declining to use them.

The focus group participants aren’t crazy. That’s what makes them terrifying. Crazy people can’t help what they believe. These people could help it.

They’ve decided what reality should look like. And they’re editing their perceptions until reality complies.

Can a democracy survive citizens who have different values? Sure.

Can it survive citizens who have different facts? Different facts that they’ve chosen, like selecting options from a menu?

I don’t know.

I just don’t know what to call it. The word crazy works for me.

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Email: josh@thepowellhousepress.com