President Donald Trump wanted to make history, and he has, plunging to new depths of ignominy. He has become the first president to be impeached twice.
Yet 75% of Republican voters still said, in a Morning Consult/Politico poll released Wednesday, that they approved of his presidency. Trump remains the overwhelming favorite of Republicans for the 2024 GOP nomination, with 42% support, followed by Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz.
As I was watching the impeachment debate and writing this column, I had a call from a childhood friend, and at the end of the call he mentioned what he considered good news: Trump was preparing to crack down on “that liberal media” with its “gays, liberals and Jews” and stop Joe Biden’s theft of the election.
“Trump’s not going to stand for it, and he’s going to get a second term,” he said. He was bewildered when I told him that this was all nonsense, that everything he believed was false and bigoted; he was startled that I could be so misinformed.
It was an echo of conversations I’d had after 9/11, from Pakistan to Gaza, Iraq to Yemen, in which local people told me that it was American Jews or the CIA that had organized the attacks on the twin towers. Amid mass delusion and a miasma of bigotry and conspiracy theories, they took up arms or bombs to defend Islam from infidels.