Three Sides of the Coin

On one hand, there are supporters of Donald Trump who will love him no matter what he does, and on the other hand there are people who hate him so much already that it seems almost impossible to make them hate him more.  And then there are the undecided voters who don’t know which candidate to settle for.  Thus, three sides of the coin.  It’s fascinating really.

The reactions to the recording of Donald Trump’s lewd conversation with Billy Bush caught on a hot mic released last Friday, October 7th, have varied greatly.  It has been very interesting to see how both sides of the argument have played out and how moderates, undecided voters, staunch Republicans, and staunch Democrats have reacted to the recording of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women.

Even the responses on the “staunch Republican” side, have varied a lot.  I’ve seen responses ranging from a woman saying “It was just a man being a man in a men’s world talking to men” in a CNN interview to conservative blog sites just trying to brush it under the rug and downplay it as much as possible.

The woman who made the comment about it being a man’s world in the CNN interview video is sitting in a room with other Trump-supporting women speaking to the CNN interviewer. (Just an interesting sidenote, make of it what you will: they’re all white women who appear to be between the ages of 35 and 50.)  The video can be found on the Anderson Cooper 360 Facebook page at this link.

On some conservative blog sites like thegatewaypundit.com and theintellectualconservative.com they have tried to downplay Mr. Trump’s comments and avoid it by flooding their websites with negative news about Mrs. Clinton instead.  On theintellectualconservative.com the posts near the top of the page are all smearing Mrs. Clinton and the one that mentions Mr. Trump is below all of those with the title “Trump: Inconveniently Truthful” suggesting that what he has to say isn’t wrong, it has just come up at an inconvenient time.

Huffington Post on the other hand, has had an article about Mr. Trump plastered at the top of the front page of their website.  Yesterday the headline read “Peeping Don: Trump Looks Up Model’s Skirts” and today their headline is “KING SMEAR: Trump Mocks Accuser: ‘She Would Not Be My First Choice’…Campaign Trots Out Absurd ‘Witness’ With Bizarre History…”.  Clearly, they don’t have any qualms about talking about Mr. Trump’s huuuuuge mistake.

Another left-leaning website is alternet.com and has headlines with a leftist spin, but the further down you scroll the more it seems like they make an effort to appear more moderate. But they too haven’t held back on reporting on Donald Trump.

All of these websites cater to different audiences and what’s a little scary is the fact that some consumers of the news on these sites may not visit websites with differing views.  So if they get all of their news from just one place, they don’t see what “the other side” is thinking and that maybe, just maybe they have some valid points.

The wide variety of differing beliefs and views in America is overwhelming and in this election a spotlight has been shown upon that fact.  There have always been levels of disagreement between the two major political parties but they seem to be at an all time high.  Firm supporters of Donald Trump and firm supporters of Hillary Clinton have radically different viewpoints and Mr. Trump’s derrogatory comments has widened the gap even further.

Not only has that recording of Donald Trump widened the gap, but it has turned some undecided voters to Hillary Clinton.  A large part of this undecided voter group that is now leaning towards Hillary Clinton are women who were repulsed by Donald Trump’s language on that recording.

Now, we’ll just have to see if it comes up again at the third presidential debate and how the American public feels after the debate.  If Donald Trump apologizes more sincerely for what he said, then he may win some favor back.  If not, then he may decline even further in the polls.