Donald Trump gave a rambling two-hour speech at a right-wing conference where he branded the U.S. a “third-world hellhole” under President Biden’s leadership. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged and investigations against him are an attempt to rig the 2024 election. He threatened to revoke funding from universities and pledged to revive the Muslim ban, mass deportations, and ending birthright citizenship. Several speakers at the conference made inflammatory claims about transgender people, calling transition healthcare “Mengele-like experimentation” and referring to trans people as “freaks” and "perverts.
In private I bet most of these people don’t talk about it at all. They probably don’t actually have strong opinions on the subject one way or the other. They just use the hate to inflame their tool followers to keep themselves in their positions of wealth.
I wouldn’t assume that public figures spewing hate don’t actually believe what they’re saying. Here in Finland we’ve had a bit of a neo-Nazi problem with our new government (literally. At least one newly minted minister had to resign due to links to actual neo-Nazism, and he’s not the only one with links) and it’s quite clear that all the ones embroiled the current scandals actually do believe what they’re saying. The problem has been that they’ve eg. referred to far right conspiracy theories like “the great replacement” (ie. tHe eLiTeS want to replace white people with brown people because reasons) multiple times but then just flat out say that they don’t believe in those theories, despite – you know – constantly referring to them
