He always was a hater. Everyone knew it. His "base" elected him anyway as backlash for us finally having the audacity to elect (and re-elect!) a black man, thus exposing our deeply-held and institutionalized national racism.
The base continues to support him because they are true believers in his sociopathic, genocidal world view. Hell, they are PROUD that his father was a Nazi.
He always was an elite. Everyone knew it. But the economically marginalized people in this country have received such a degraded public eduation that they bought his line about being for the common man because they had seen him on TV and he acted tough, thus exposing the fact that the deliberate defunding of the public education system has finally produced that which the founders feared: an electorate incapable of governing itself.
The marginalized continue to support him because it is too hard to face the fact that they have been duped. Did you know that, next to rape, fraud is the second most unreported crime? For the same reason, too: shame.
He always was an idiot. Everyone knew it. Especially the craven members of the Republican power structure who shoehorned him over the finish line despite the known fact that a hostile foreign government had manipulated our sacred democratic process to "elect" him via the electoral college (there are lots of balls in the air, but don't take your eye off the one about Russian social media interference in key swing states - thanks, Mark Z). They all banded together to get him elected because they were sure he was a patsy they could manipulate to their own ends, especially with a three-way monopoly on power.
Now, this idiot hasshown himself to his would-be handlers as incorrigible. He refuses to learn governance from them, although it is unlcear whether his recalcitrance is caused by lack of interest or lack of capacity. He has destroyed their long-awaited crack at a pure Republican legislative agenda while blaming them for their failure to produce results. He has consorted with the enemy by caving to the demands of Schumer and Pelosi (and I must admit that one was delicious). He is clearly the single most corrupt and unethical president in our history, and any one of the shocking revelations arising from his administration in the last 10 months would have resulted in immediate impeachment proceedings for Mr. Obama or for Ms. Clinton, and yet the Republicans remain curiously unconcerned. He is in a shouting match with his bookend twin madman, Kim Jong Un, thus imperiling the entire planet, and the Republican simper that he should tone it down a bit. He insults the Puerto Rican people (3.5 million American citizens!) as they die from lack of our immediate help and aid, and this does not shame the Republicans before the world. And they all know, as surely as they DO know that human-induced global catastrophic climate change is real, that this excrescense of a demagogue is selling us out to the Russians because they have the goods on his corrupt business practices and will expose him. And yes, they all know he really did rape that little girl 20 years ago. Washington is a small town and the world of New York moneyed elite a very small club, and yes they do know it, but we never saw them rise up to protect the “wimmin-folk” on that one any more than they were willing to toss him under the Access Hollywood bus.
None of these high crimes, misdemeanors and downright incompetence weigh on the Republicans’ conscience or stir whatever dregs of latent patriotism might lie in the sediment of their dark and murky souls. (Well, one or two of them who have the luxury of being at death’s door might have dredged up what’s left of their testicular fortitude, but that’s the anomaly). Almost to a person, they mince their words, they equivocate for the cameras, and they put the lie to their own pretense of integrity for all the world to see every time they open their mouths in the most shameful display of cravenness since a couple of the Senators of Rome defended Caligula. Justice, humanity, patriotism, and decency mean nothing to them now. They are in too deep.
The Republicans continue to support him because they and all their friends are still making money.
We desperately await our Claudius.