On Morning Joe RawStory reported that branding expert Donnie Deutsh said:

“From here on in, the other side has the ability to take the great brander and brand him in the most simplistic term: convicted felon, that’s powerful.”

“Yes, I went on the show the other day and said, I don’t know if it’ll matter that much,” he admitted. “When I heard the guilty verdict, it hit me. He simplistically is in a box now. Two things happened to his brand: number one, he is not invincible, the armor got pierced, and that is a big deal. If he had been acquitted, you can’t get this guy, he’s bigger than everybody, he is bigger than life — he’s not. Heis invincible.”

“Now, the eight-year streak of losing for Republicans,” he stated. “Donald Trump lost. He is a loser. He is anything but invincible. He is branded permanently a convicted felon, that’s a big deal.”

This is an optimistic take – like like those expressed by others – but the GOP reactions to the verdict as a sham, and the trial as a witch hunt lead by Biden, I expect is working as planned in advance by his henchmen with his cult.

The verdict alone won’t move the opinion needle all that much.

Wishing won’t make it so. 

Instead of burying his brand it is burnishing it.

Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains in part why in How stupidity is an existential threat to America.

While he goes into scientific detail explaining, for example the Dunning-Kruger effect (here) which is the well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area all you have to do is read his first paragraph:

It may sound like an insensitive statement, but the cold hard truth is that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and their stupidity presents a constant danger to others. Some of these people are in positions of power, and some of them have been elected to run our country. A far greater number of them do not have positions of power, but they still have the power to vote, and the power to spread their ideas. We may have heard of “collective intelligence,” but there is also “collective stupidity,” and it is a force with equal influence on the world. It would not be a stretch to say that at this point in time, stupidity presents an existential threat to America because, in some circles, it is being celebrated.

Cult expert Steve Hasan has written a book about the cult of Trump (review in Psychitric Times here and in Psychology Today here.

You don’t have to read any of these articles to understand why a “mere” conviction on 34 felonies will change the minds of the typical member of the public who views Trump as the saviour. Whether it changes the mind of the many GOP politicians who are posting virtually the same messages on X is impossible to determine, but it won’t change the messages they are sending the sham trial witch hunt posts they put out on X and express in the media.

Today we see reporters interviewing Trump supporters (for example, above) about their view of the conviction you can see how they are buying the story being spun by Trump himself and by his minions. They are angry and adament that the trial was a witch hunt with Trump as the victim of a weaponized Biden justice system.

Last night Fox News viewers saw a Trump lawyer rant on telliing lies about how the trial was unconsitutional and political.

Yesterday after the verdict the two New York City tabloids, one anti-Trump and the other pro-Trump came out with decidely different takes. Passersby in the city will see both on newstands and in newspaper vending boxes.

One doesn’t have to go into explaining how the Dunning-Kruger effect or confirmation bias ( the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values) scientifically explains why people who already believe everything Trump says about being the victim and their not having their belief in him changed as a result of this conviction.

Featured image:

Someone posted an observation on a private Facebook group so I made my own New Yorker cover illustration:

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