Republicans believe the darndest things

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post shares a collection of batshit crazy stuff many GOPers claim to believe. Having grown up in a Republican household with a mother who was a Party activist, it's hard to fathom that in Trumptime, so many have so far jumped the guard rails of reality.

• An August 2022 YouGov poll after the search of Mar-a-Lago showed 38 percent of Republicans believed the FBI planted evidence there. Just 23 percent disagreed with that proposition (another 39 percent were “not sure”). 
  

• A YouGov poll the next month showed a majority of Republicans said it was at least “probably true” that the FBI planted classified documents.
  

• A Suffolk University poll shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, showed 58 percent of Donald Trump supporters said the Capitol riot was “mostly an Antifa-inspired attack that involved only a few Trump supporters.” There remains zero evidence for this.
  

• A recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed 34 percent said it was at least “probably true” that the FBI organized and encouraged the attack on the Capitol. (About half that number believed there was “solid evidence” of this.)
  

• YouGov polling in December showed 42 percent of Republicans believe “many top Democrats” are caught up in child sex-trafficking rings, 35 percent believe mass shootings have been faked to promote gun control, and 28 percent believe the government used covid vaccines to implant microchips in people.
  

• The same poll showed fully 60 percent of Republicans believe there is “a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together.” (Democratic support for the proposition was about half — 28 percent.)
  

• And, of course, polls generally show around 6 in 10 or more Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, despite the complete lack of evidence more than three years later. 

Republican's eagerness to believe impossible things is a true challenge to small "d" democracy. The happily deluded are not a majority. Our job is to remember that and keep it that way.