Most are fine with it. Remember the people that died of covid denying it existed the whole time? That's the type. They're dumb af.

You're very unlikely to get a response from a Republican on Lemmy

Just for some perspective: in 2009 I was a Christian nationalist and I thought Obama was going to use FEMA to imprison conservative dissenters and would turn the US into a communist dictatorship. I hoped and prayed for an explicitly Christian government and an end to most federal programs. If I had the same worldview now, I would be orgasmically happy with the way things are going.

At this point, I don't know why Republicans don't outright just say they want people who they see as less than them suffering and/or dead. That's their only consistent political view.

I know a couple life-long Republicans I sometimes briefly talk about politics with (one family, one acquaintance). Neither of them like Trump, but like the idea around Project 2025. One is an evangelical Christian, the other is a Catholic.

The Catholic strongly believes government should be run like a business, and the president should be like a CEO, so he should be able to fire everyone and replace them, if needed, with workers that will execute his plans. He's also an anti-abortion, and tough-on-crime/immigration type. However, he strongly disapproves of Trump seemingly being pro-Russian now, Trump and his cabinet's personal lives (he's always strangely fixated on people's personal lives, in a moral sense, for some reason), the take-over of the FBI and CIA, and the tariffs hurting his stock portfolio.

The evangelical Christian just doesn't like Trump as a person, and doesn't like Russia. He's a just-world-hypothesis, small government, women are subservient, pro-business type; but also low/lower-middle-class, and has needed, and will need the social services he opposes. I guess his opinions are pretty similar to the Catholic's, just a little more extreme on the social side, and supports policies that have always hurt him. I mean, Republican policies hurt the (fairly wealthy) Catholic too, but at least they get to say their taxes are lower and there's less red-tape.

Republicans lie. As any fascist party, they don't have any consistent ideology beyond hurting people. They'll invent whatever reasoning and justification they need to justify their bullying, and they'll immediately abandon that reason for another convenient excuse when necessary.

Republicans lie. They knew damn well what Project 2025 was, and they were in favor of all of it. When they said Trump had nothing to do with it, they were lying. Republicans ultimately don't care what happens to society, or even themselves personally. They would gladly vote to lower the quality of their own lives, as long as the undesirables were hurt in equal measure.

Oh no, the lying liar who is best known for lying about literally everything lied and gullible people believed it (or conveniently ignored it, or didn't care or thought it was just peachy because they thought it wouldn't apply to them and were perfectly fine with it applying to other people)? Who could possibly have predicted that? Oh wait, I think literally every left wing person in the US predicted that.

Project 2025 is the most double talky I've ever seen Donald Trump. "Project 2025? Nope, never seen it, never heard of anything in it, but it's got some great ideas. I'm not going to follow it and I don't have anything to do with it but I hear it has some really good ideas, but I won't be adhering to them."

Reminds me of the "Unite The Right" rally where he wouldn't really condemn anyone: "Those folks are really nasty, but also there's a lot of good folks."

I think this is part of his "charm". He double talks, so if you are a fan you perk up on the positives and let your eyes glass over during the bad parts.

I don't know any republicans personally but I would not be surprised if, given a choice between admitting fault and feeling bad, or literally any other option including lying or violence, they won't admit fault. If they weren't emotionally stunted, they wouldn't be conservatives.

They don't think Trump and Musk are doing anything wrong. When quizzed they'll ask you to name anything they've done wrong.

Everything Trump and Musk are doing is guised in Libertarian and Conservative values.So nothing wrong has been done on their eyes.

If you go places like r/JordanPeterson (to ask) and r/Conservative to observe the media landscape - you'll see that "The Woke" are wrong and have turned violent against Tesla. You'll see Trump and Musk are thought of as doing great things.

That's how they think. They're not in the same media landscape as everyone else is.

Edit: apparently the part in OP starting "From a Republican..." is not meant to imply that OP is a Republican. As it lacked a main verb, I assumed it was ultimately meant as a relative clause and misassigned it to "I". Leaving this comment anyway but it doesn't apply to OP.

I appreciate you taking the time to write this post, and I appreciate you noticing this trend.

But I've got to be honest: the writing was on the wall the whole time. Being in the Republican bubble doesn't really change the fact that you only get here from a lack of critical thinking and a general susceptibility to propaganda. These are things that many people spend time and resources getting educated about. It's hard to have sympathy when the whole country is now suffering because so many were so sure they knew better.

If I sound angry, I am. I do hope you take it constructively, but you also need to understand: most of the damage has already been done. It doesn't really matter how you feel from here on out, because the deed (from voters) is done.

YouGov has good data

I don't see any drastic changes on Trump's approval, but there's unfavorablity across the board otherwise

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Donald_Trump

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51856-congressional-democrats-government-cuts-deportations-immigration-economy-march-16-18-2025-economist-yougov-poll

Ask the guy who had his wife deported and is still supporting Trump.