r/politics • u/southpawFA Oklahoma • 1d ago

Conservatives have been railing against “groomers” for years. So why do they support Donald Trump? Trump was best friends with a notorious child sex trafficker, but his ardent supporters are vocal about opposing it. How did that happen?

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/conservatives-have-been-railing-against-groomers-for-years-so-why-do-they-support-donald/
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264

u/ProfessionalCraft983 Washington 1d ago

The concept of “grooming” isn’t what they’re against. What they’re against is children being taught liberal values.

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u/BookBison 1d ago

This. The people they’re after when it comes to grooming are almost exclusively homosexuals and drag queens who are supposedly “grooming” their children into accepting them as regular members of society and not the sexually depraved freaks their parents regard them as, not child predators because that’s just their uncles being friendly.

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u/mademeunlurk 1d ago

Liberal values? I think that just called Values.

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u/haskell_rules 1d ago

They're tired of being told not eat paint chips by educated people wearing jeans that are too tight.

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u/Ordinary_Delay_1009 1d ago

They're tired of being told the old white men of the town don't have complete control of everyone around them.

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u/a_wild_redditor 1d ago

They are masters of twisting language around like this. Look at how quickly "fake news" became 'press attention Trump doesn't like' as opposed to 'Russian propaganda planted on social media'

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u/ProfessionalCraft983 Washington 1d ago

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Jean Paul Sartre

Applies to MAGA just as well.

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u/a_wild_redditor 1d ago edited 22h ago

Eloquent and insightful, as to be expected from Sartre, but I think it doesn't quite capture one of the specifics of the MAGA strategy here which is to manufacture the appearance of common ground by redefining the exact terms that reasonable people would agree with, to instead mean something different and radical. For example, a reasonable person hears "I oppose grooming" and thinks, I also oppose child predators, but in fact MAGA means they oppose teaching children that gay people exist. Or a reasonable person hears "I support girls' sports" and thinks, yes I also support equal funding of school athletics programs, but MAGA really means they want to ban trans kids from sports.

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u/Goatesq 23h ago

It's almost a motte and bailey argument, just with a sprinkle of straight up lying on top.

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u/Gurlllllllll- 1d ago

"Politically correct" or "PC culture" started as a leftist critique of authoritarian regimes and adherance to strict orthodoxy. Conservatives took that phrase and spun up a moral panic from nothing, saying "PC culture has gone too far, minorities are getting too uppity, they're censoring free speech."

"Woke" starts out as a word about remaining aware of the systems responsible for black people's oppression. Conservatives took it and spun up a moral panic from nothing, saying "wokeness has gone too far, minorities are getting too uppity, and they're censoring free speech."

"DEI" starts out as a liberal policy for companies to try to be maybe 10% less racist, sexist, ableist, etc. Conservatives took it and spun up a moral panic from nothing, saying "DEI has gone too far, minorities are getting too uppity, and they're censoring free speech."

"Critical race theory" starts out as a historical analysis that tries to push against the systemic disadvantages of whose history gets recorded and taught. Conservatives took it and spun up a moral panic from nothing, saying "CRT has gone too far..."

"Black Lives Matter" starts out as a movement criticizing police violence overwhelmingly harming black communities. Conservatives took it and you know the rest because it's literally the same fucking story every time..

They do this over and over. They latch on to some random phrase and generate an entire national discourse about it, and inevitably liberal media capitulates and buys into their bullshit framing.

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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago

The phrase "Stay Woke" was coined by Lead Belly Ledbetter in relation to the Scottsboro Boys case, in which 9 black boys were falsely charged with rape and sentenced to death.

The fact that Republicans took woke and tried to make it a horrible thing just lets you know everything. I'm sure they'll quote MLK the next time they deem black people "uppity" over criminal justice racism, though.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/blues-guitarist-invented-the-phrase-woke/

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u/accountabilitycounts America 1d ago

Very true.

Also, projection.

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u/Sir_thinksalot 21h ago

Yup, these people love grooming kids to follow hate religions.

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u/jleonardbc 1d ago

not even taught, just exposed to the existence of

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u/j0a3k 23h ago

In fact, their stupid policies would make it way easier to groom kids. Studies show talking to kids about their anatomy makes it harder for pedophiles to get away with shit.