The Church of Trump
At the president’s rallies, his devotees find the relief of belonging—and something more, besides.
Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, in late January of 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced to an audience in Sioux City: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Trump, who has always been prone to fantastical overstatement, was derided at the time, but here and now—over two-and-a-half years later—the statement seems prescient.
You could list the scandals—from the Mueller probe to Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, from Tom Price to Scott Pruitt to Ben Carson, from Bill Shine to Ronny Jackson to Jared Kushner, from the Trump Hotel to the Trump label, from Charlottesville to Ukraine—and while it would be very long, it would not (at least in the eyes of his supporters) be disqualifying. Politically speaking, the president is standing with his guns blazing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and he’s not losing anyone. Miraculously, Trump remains on top; so far this year, Gallup has registered an approval rating among the members of his own party ranging from 81 to 90 percent. Despite it all, those numbers have barely budged.
How is such a thing possible? In part, it’s a symptom of contemporary politics—Obama enjoyed similarly high approval ratings from Democratic partisans during his terms in office. And there’s some evidence that Republicans disaffected with Trump are ceasing to identify with their party, leaving only the president’s supporters behind. But Obama never endured a comparable string of scandals; the erosion of the GOP’s ranks doesn’t explain the fervency of those who remain.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/the-church-of-trump/567425/
= new reply since forum marked as read
