Mailbag: MAGA has opinions, and think they’re more important than facts

Do you have ANY conservatives on staff? This is your idea of fair and balanced?
– Oleta Lambert

This email started a back-and-forth with a MAGA reader who, I would learn, over the course of more than a dozen emails, thinks Fox News actually means it when it calls its content “fair and balanced.”

(Spoiler: not the case.)

I explained that AFP’s core values are universal healthcare, reproductive freedoms for women, good-paying jobs for the middle class, keeping the world safe from fascist leaders like Vladimir Putin intent on reworking political boundaries in Europe, from China trying to extend its influence in the Pacific and globally, and making sure millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.

According to Ms. Lambert, universal healthcare and reproductive freedoms are “Marxist left-wing causes,” “we haven’t had that (good-paying jobs) for the last four years,” “Putin is not a threat to the U.S.,” and millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share of taxes isn’t an issue anymore, because Democrats haven’t been able to convince Republicans to not filibuster changes to the tax code.

Hard to argue with any of that, right?

Lambert then complained that I didn’t seem to want to know what motivated her, so I asked.

Oddly, after asking me to ask her what motivated her, she never formally responded, even as she continued trying to score MAGA talking points, so I pieced together her disjointed weaving from the collection of emails to try to make sense of what she seems to want, other than the obvious, Donald Trump, and owning the libs, to answer her points, one by one.

You might be thinking now, you don’t have enough to do in a day, that you have the time to spend to do this?

I was trying to be fair, is my defense.

“I do not think the government should have any involvement in healthcare.”

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So, you will not enroll yourself in Medicare, and I presume, related, you will not accept Social Security benefits.

Both would count as “socialist” programs, under the MAGA definition.

“I am concerned about who is actually running the country making terrible decisions and the incredible mismanagement of world affairs by these same unelected people.”

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Incredibly shortsighted, but typical MAGA. Putin’s ambassador to the U.S. literally threatened the use of nuclear weapons over the U.S. and Western support for Ukraine. Russia still has thousands of nuclear warheads with missile systems aimed at targets in the U.S. and Europe.

Putin is a real threat.

The “unelected people” jab is a reference common among MAGAs to “unelected” career officials in the State Department. Problem for MAGA on this: those same “unelected” career officials were in those jobs during the Trump administration, and would be again if he were to be elected.

Unless you would have a new Trump administration (or a new Harris administration) replace all 2.95 million people who work for the federal government.

People who run Subway franchises can’t find enough people to make sandwiches and run the cash register; imagine trying to replace 2.95 million people every four years.

“I am most concerned with the millions of illegals overrunning our borders, voting in our elections and overrunning small towns.”

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According to the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, the undocumented immigrant population in 2017 (when Donald Trump took office) was 11.2 million. In 2021, as Trump left office, and Joe Biden took over, it was 10.9 million. It’s at 11.7 million now.

For reference, in the Barack Obama years (2009-2017), the undocumented immigration population that Obama inherited from the George W. Bush era was 12.1 million, and decreased over his eight years by 900,000.

Where we are now is at a point lower than when Obama took office post-Bush.

For all the bluster that we got from Trump, his era saw only a small decrease in the undocumented immigrant population.

“The highest and most rapid inflation ever over the last 3+ years.”

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Not even close. The highest rate ever was 1946, post-WWII, 18.1 percent inflation. (Source: Federal Reserve.)

More recently, it was 1979-1981 (13.3 percent, 12.5 percent, 8.9 percent).

The inflation rates in the Biden years have been 7.0 percent (2021, post-COVID), 6.5 percent in 2022, 3.4 percent in 2023, and 2024 is on pace for an annual inflation rate of 3.1 percent.

***

I spent several minutes on the google machine crafting the response, right?

The response that I got back from Ms. Lambert was classic:

“I am not going to argue each point with you.”

Of course this was the case.

Because she didn’t email me at the outset intending to actually engage in a discussion of the issues of the day, and how we as a nation can best address what faces us.

Honestly, I don’t blame her for not wanting to “argue each point.” Because she can’t. Because those are the facts. And I presume that she, like millions of MAGA followers, don’t like facts.

They want to have a right to their opinion, which they feel is more valuable than facts.

That’s the problem we have right now in America. Millions of people like this lady don’t accept facts, and think their half-baked opinions are more important because they’re their half-baked opinions.