In what must be a political psychologist’s wet dream, the stories of people actively going against their own self-interests to vote for Donald Trump continue to turn up. We’ve covered this bizarre phenomena before of people putting misplaced ideology over logic.
A fine example is 83-year-old Patrick Vincent. After injuring his arm during a fall at a Trump property, he sued the reality TV star for $175,000. Vincent said that his arm “turned completely black” and even after years of physical therapy “it’s still not the same.”
The 2014 bankruptcy of Trump Plaza Associates prevented Vincent from claiming any money to help pay for his medical bills. Even after all this, Vincent is still an adamant Trump supporter, for some reason.
“I lost $175,000 and I’m a poor man, but I love him,” he said. “We got a lot of retards in this country, but Donald Trump is the man who is going to help the people… I ain’t going against him.”
This baffling view is shared by another victim of Trump’s bankruptcy casualties, Carmella Worton. In 2008 Worton fell in a Trump Taj Mahal stairwell, injuring her knee and jaw. She filed a $100,000 claim, but due to the 2009 bankruptcy of Trump Entertainment Resorts, she only received $5,000.
Unable to afford to finish her necessary medical treatments, she claims she is still in serious pain with “permanent problems.” Despite feeling that Trump still owes her money for pain and suffering, Worton is willing to put aside her grievances for an imagined political agenda Trump would bring to the Presidency.
“I don’t care what he owes me. That’s irrelevant to what I feel about him in the long run… I love the man.”
Worton cited Trump’s plans to put an end to outsourcing (something Trump does in his own business) as something she strongly supported.
“Him being in power will change a lot for America. We need to make America whole. We are not whole, we are nothing, we are a nobody. You go and talk to your cable company, you’re talking to another country. This country has allowed outsourcing to take American jobs away,” she said. “He’s a real true blue American. He doesn’t care about the overseas. He doesn’t care about friendliness—enough of the friendliness.”
The cognitive dissonance of Trump voters is palatable. They claim he’s the only one who will help people, even after he has failed to help them. His history of dodging legal responsibilities isn’t the help America needs, but it doesn’t seem like they are capable of realizing that.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr under Creative Commons