Trump's unraveling is having a surprising effect on voters: conservative

Former President Donald Trump's mental deterioration and disdain for America itself is becoming clear even to his die-hard fans, conservative commentator and former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday — but they have a surprising mentality around it.

This comes as Trump delivered a recent speech in which he proclaimed, "Cities are choking to death, our states are dying. And frankly, our country is dying. Right now, our country is known as a joke. It's a joke."

"Tom, not only is none of that even close to true, it's ridiculous, honestly," said Reid. "I wonder what does one say about a country where adults listen to that and then listen to Biden and say no, I want that. That is what should be the president. That's how the president should sound."

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"And those weren't the worst clips you could have played; there are much worse," said Nichols. "You know, it's been an unfair double standard against his opponents, where Joe Biden has to lay to rest the age issue, but Donald Trump never has to lay to rest the mental instability issue. That, you know, Joe Biden is old. Okay, we get it. He's 81. He doesn't spring up the stairs like a man of 35. Donald Trump is unhinged. You know, I'm not going to diagnose him, but there's clearly something wrong with the man."

There are a couple of reasons Trump voters hear all that and choose him anyway, Nichols continued. "First, his base doesn't care. His base thinks of him — the worse he is, the more they love him because they think of him as revenge on all of their other fellow voters, and the more uncomfortable he makes everyone, they think that's great because they don't care about passing legislation, protecting the country, who is holding the codes to I don't know that, it didn't matter to me."

"I think it's because that's just priced in," he added. "They think he's a TV character, and this is a TV show. And they forget that every single day, every morning, someone is going to hand that guy a little card that has the codes to America's nuclear arsenal on it. And they're not thinking twice about that because it just doesn't impinge on that reality TV mentality that too many Americans have."

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