Four Forces Bind Trump’s Supporters More Tightly Than Ever
During a CNN town hall earlier this month, Donald Trump acted as expected. He used the phrase “wack job” to describe E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million in damages because a jury unanimously concluded that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her. His statement elicited applause and laughter from the mostly pro-Trump crowd. He also described the January 6 insurrection as a “beautiful day” and declared that, if reelected president in 2024, he would pardon a “large portion” of the rioters. Those statements, too, brought applause from the raucous audience.
There was more. Trump called the Black police officer who had shot and killed one of the rioters storming the Capitol a “thug,” falsely claiming that the officer had bragged about the incident. Trump defended taking top-secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate. He wouldn’t say whether he hoped that Ukraine would win the war against Russia. And he spewed lie after lie after lie about the 2020 election and virtually every other topic that came up.
As the CNN anchor Jake Tapper said of Trump, summing up the night, “He declared war on the truth, and I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”
The day after the town hall, I asked a person in the talk-radio world how his listeners had responded. “One hundred percent approval of Trump’s performance,” this individual, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, told me. “I even tried to get
