As I said yesterday, Trump’s hardcore supporters aren’t going to be put off by his toadying to Vladimir Putin.
So it went in interviews with Republican voters across the country on Monday and Tuesday, most of them devoted to the president’s policies generally. They quickly sorted themselves into two camps: those who winced at the episode, or at least questioned it, and those who continued to defend Mr. Trump without hesitation.
If history is a guide — and polling, too — the second group is significantly larger within the party. And for Mr. Trump’s true loyalists, the Helsinki meeting and its aftermath have once more inspired a sense of fury and grievance on his behalf. It is not merely that they support the president in spite of his Russia stance, like Republican lawmakers who grimace at times but largely embrace his agenda. Increasingly, these voters have absorbed Mr. Trump’s every viewpoint, his scapegoats, even his language tics as their own.
Trumpism has become a cult and, though the narratives are all different, devout Trumpists are as out of touch with reality as devout Southern Baptists and devout Scientologists.