I'm starting to believe the average conservative is just that stupid. They can't connect the dots on their own and they can't tell the truth from lies. If you tell them A -> B and B -> C they won't come to A -> C. You have to explicitly show them A -> C for them to see that. And that works only if there's nobody else (like Trump) telling them A can't lead to C.
I can imagine her justifying supporting Trump because Trump said he had nothing to do with the kids stuff. We've known for years but for her all it takes is Trump saying he didn't do it and in her eyes we're wrong.
This is wrong in so many levels.
First of all the vote wasn't for the whole Union because there were countries that outright rejected the idea of the union and never voted in the first place. 76% is only of the number people who voted actually voted, that's not indicative of the whole union.
And secondly the vote was for a reformed Union, not a continuation of the existing union. If the course of events had continued in the reformation of the union the union we know in the history books still would've ceased to exist.
And finally, with this not being a fact but generally accepted in the academia, people voted for stability not for the union. When it became apparent there won't be any stability people decided to fend for themselves. By the time Yeltsin dissolved the union it was already on its death bed.
It's also why none of the countries stayed socialist, because soviet socialism was a failure and instead of taking the time to figure out what a functional socialism would look like countries went with what seemingly worked, capitalism. Stability was more important than staying socialist, especially when the only empirical evidence of socialism was ultimately a failure.