the view

President Donald Trump once warned against a huge "time bomb" facing the country while he raged on the 2016 campaign trail, but according to a new piece from The Hill, he now seems content to completely ignore it.

Writing for the outlet on Sunday, legal scholar David Wippman and historian Glenn C. Altschuler noted that Republicans have been fussing about the national debt for decades, harkening back to warnings from Ronald Reagan in 1981 when it surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. They also noted that Trump himself said that the U.S. was "sitting on a time bomb" of debt when he first ran for president, pledging that he would eliminate it within eight years.

As he reaches the halfway point of his second term a decade later, he has come nowhere close to that lofty promise, with the debt hitting the $40 trillion milestone last month. In fact, Wippman and Altschuler explained, he is doing considerable work to worsen the debt severely.

"Since January 2025, the debt has gone up almost $4 trillion," the pair explained. "Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add an additional $4.7 trillion. Earlier this month, Trump promised $5,000 to every adult citizen if Republicans retain control of Congress in the midterm elections. With a price tag of $1.2 trillion, the 'Trump dividend,' he indicated, would be funded by 'the tremendous economic success' of the U.S., which 'is making so much money' from tariffs."

The pair noted further that the vast majority of Americans, 98 percent per a recent poll, share Trump's disinterest and said that the national debt is not one of the biggest issues threatening the country right now.

"Many more might do so if they realized that America’s spendthrift ways are hitting them hard, right now," the pair added. "The national debt isn’t the only — or even the main — factor determining interest rates. But increases place upward pressure on interest rates, in part because the government must offer higher returns on government bonds to attract investors. Even small increases matter. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that a 0.55 percent increase in mortgage rates would increase payments on a $500,000 mortgage by almost $200 a month, and the lifetime cost of the loan by $64,000."

They added later: "Nonetheless, politicians continue to kick the can down the road. Nor has the national debt received much attention in the 2026 midterms. Despite his 2016 'time bomb' warning, Trump seems to have lost interest in reducing, let alone eliminating, our national debt. Asked whether he was concerned about rising interest rates, the president replied, 'I don’t think so at all.'"

President Donald Trump's evident decline has had numerous visible impacts on his abilities, with one body language expert exposing the new ways in which it is causing him to struggle to "project power."

Dr. John Paul Garrison is a clinical and forensic psychologist, as well as an expert in interpreting body language. He also produces numerous videos using his professional expertise to shed light on the behaviors of public figures and what they reveal. This has included many videos about Trump and his signs of failing health, with Garrison theorizing that the president is experiencing accelerated decline, often consistent with the symptoms of a recent stroke.

In his latest video about Trump, Garrison explored the body language cues present during the president's recent visit from Chinese leader Xi Jinping. While the discussion centered on "power dynamics," Garrison stressed that this was all happening amid a context of Trump's seeming decline, noting that "his behavior and body language are actually different than they used to be." Early on, he noted that the president continued to struggle with involuntary spasms during the visit, and explained that this put him on the back foot with Xi, as he would be "focused on trying to control his body rather than anything else."

Garrison highlighted the times when Trump paused his speech so it could be translated into Chinese, during which he lifted his chin higher into the air. This, he explained, is a common tactic people use when trying to assert strength, as it exposes the neck and communicates that you are not concerned about a weakness being targeted. Trump also struggled to keep still during these moments, with Garrison suggesting that other world leaders would see it "as a sign of discomfort or a sign of not feeling at ease."

Garrison then transitioned to an examination of Xi's body language for contrast.

"So, what you're observing so far is that he has what I would describe as a normal reaction that you would expect from a world leader. He appears attentive while President Trump is speaking," he explained. "He's nodding while he's listening to the translation. Everything you're observing right now is essentially what you would expect from a situation like this. And the reason I'm even showing you this now is that President Trump's reaction, when we're going to look at President Xi speaking, is quite different."

He continued: "As you can see, he looks around a little bit. He doesn't have an intense gaze, just staring at President Trump. Nor is he looking away or looking uninterested. As I said, it's basically what you would anticipate in a situation like this. Seeing President Trump and President Xi back-to-back really makes it stand out how uncomfortable President Trump often times looks when he's been speaking lately. President Xi appears very calm. You're not really seeing any emotion on his face. He certainly isn't moving around a lot. Basically, everything is as you would expect from someone who has a very disciplined and controlled way to provide speeches."

Garrison later concluded that Xi consistently showed "a very calm, measured approach to basically everything," while Trump appeared "much more distractible."

"[Trump] seems to be struggling more with attention than he ever has," Garrison explained. "And it seems that he was very excited towards President Xi, particularly as the second day wore on. Now, one big difference between the two is that President Xi seems somewhat ambivalent, at least in my opinion, about whether or not President Trump likes him. The body language doesn't suggest that he has any particular interest or cares whether or not President Trump likes him. Whereas President Trump is sort of the opposite. It seems like he really wants to be liked by Shei. He seems excited by him. And it seems like what he wants is some acknowledgement."

The Republican Party has given a sure sign that they have given up on a major midterm fight, according to the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America, and are now scrambling to mitigate the potential damage.

In the latest edition of the Pod Save America podcast, the hosts, composed of former Obama administration officials and staffers, discussed the latest signs that the GOP is about to get wiped out by a blue wave in November. In particular, host and former White House speechwriter director Jon Favreau highlighted a new update from The Cook Political Report, which declared, "GOP on track to lose House majority as 15 race ratings shift toward Dems."

"So, they say that the most likely outcome at this point is that Democrats pick up anywhere from five to 15 House seats," Favreau explained. "Which even at the low end would mean no more Speaker Mike Johnson."

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior communications adviser to Barack Obama, explained that the dire odds for the House GOP have led to a dead giveaway that the party has fully thrown in the towel in terms of potentially retaining its majority in the chamber, and it all comes down to the districts where they have opted to spend their considerable funds.

"You can tell the Republicans know the House is gone because they've moved much of their money to districts that Trump won by 10 to 15 points," Pfeiffer explained. "So, there's three districts that Trump won by 15 points that they're investing in right here in Texas. They're doing all across the country. And the goal here is not to preserve the majority. It's to limit the size of the Democratic majority to make it easier for them to potentially get it back in 2028 or 2030."

Pfeiffer noted further that this sort of mitigation tactic is where the GOP's sizeable fundraising lead over Democrats will come in handy.

"And this is where having basically unlimited money matters because it allows the Republicans to play in a whole bunch of races to shore them off the Democrats cannot," he added. "We do not have that money, so Democrats have to be incredibly disciplined about how to do it. And it's like, we want to win as many seats as possible. Want the largest majority possible, [which] allows us to do the most stuff. It also sends the most powerful message to the country, to the post-Trump Republican Party, to the CEOs, law firms, media companies who have kowtowed to Trump, that politics has changed in America."

At a time when his network remains under assault by the administration, CNN's top fact-checker Daniel Dale received acclaim as he revealed his top takeaways after a full decade of covering and correcting President Donald Trump.

On Sunday morning, Dale published a new piece marking the notable anniversary, digging into the things he has learned over the years of sifting through Trump's "remarkable number of lies" during his time at the forefront of American political life.

“Ten years ago this month, in my old job as Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, I started what I believed would be a quick little side project: fact-checking underdog presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was telling a remarkable number of lies but was rarely being corrected. Like a lot of people, I thought Trump would lose the 2016 election,” Dale detailed. "I was very wrong. And Trump continued to be very wrong, about a dizzying variety of subjects, for the next decade.”

He added later in the piece: "The lies cause real harm. Some of Trump’s lies are so bizarre or trivial that I can’t help but laugh. On the whole, though, his lies have been deeply harmful to the country. People died because of the Capitol riot prompted by his lies about the 2020 election. His lies downplaying Covid-19 almost certainly led to deaths, too. Specific people targeted by his lies, including journalists, judges and election workers, have faced threats and harassment. His lies have worsened innumerable public debates around critical policy issues. And American democracy itself is worse off for all the lying, too."

The reaction to the piece across social media was largely glowing, with various colleagues and public figures hailing Dale's efforts and highlighting the particularly important points raised in his new piece.

"Thank you, Daniel Dale, for being one of the few political reporters who is willing to describe Trump's *unmatched* degree of dishonesty and lying more accurately and consistently," communications consultant Susan Bordson wrote in response to the piece on X, highlighting further a "Key excerpt re MSM press practices" in response to Trump's lies.

"Pro-Trump media entities have shown embarrassingly little interest in addressing his lies," Dale wrote in the passage she highlighted. "But more neutral outlets have regularly failed, too. On the last full day of Trump’s first presidency in 2021, I wrote, 'Too often, coverage of flagrantly dishonest Trump speeches still mentioned the dishonesty in passing or not at all. Too often, coverage still quoted the president’s lies without explaining that they were wrong.' More than five years later, these problems persist."

Brian Stelter, a professional colleague of Dale's and chief media analyst for CNN, highlighted some of what he saw as the key takeaways from the piece: "Dale's takeaways include: 'the bigger the crisis, the more Trump lies,' Trump 'is not only a supplier of bad information but a consumer of it,' 'the mainstream media doesn't handle Trump’s lying well enough,' and 'the lies cause real harm.'"

"That our nation has largely adjusted to having a habitual liar as president is shameful," Jennifer Erin Valent wrote. "Worse yet, he has been strongly supported by Christians who claim to honor the God of truth, who are meant to defy the father of lies, and who are commanded not to bear false witness."

"Everybody who supports or opposes Trump should read this, the thoughts of prominent factchecker Daniel Dale on the context and proliferation of Trump's lies," retired Chicago reporter Ray Long wrote.

"One of the heroes of American journalism is this Canadian, who has single-handedly researched and catalogued thousands of lies by our president," Daniel Boardman, dean of the Klein College of Media and Communications, wrote in a post about Dale.

"'Two months before Election Day in 2020… he was telling so many campaign lies that I’d become physically unable to look into all of them while living something loosely resembling a healthy life,'" senior CNN producer Shawn Reynolds wrote in a post quoting Dale's piece. "By then, I’d recorded more than 8,500 false claims since September 2016.”

The Trump administration this weekend released a confounding new ad hyping up President Donald Trump, which was promptly torn to shreds online as "shameless," "maximally corrupt" and "incredibly illegal."

On Sunday, a new ad began airing, first on Fox on Saturday during a college football game featuring Illinois and Ohio State, and then again the following day during Fox News Sunday. The 30-second clip is composed of black-and-white footage of Trump walking down a hallway towards the camera, while excerpts from a speech play in which he says, "This is the final battle," promises to drive out "warmongers," "globalists" and "communists," and pledges to "liberate" the country from "villains."

At the end, a disclaimer further discloses that the ad was "paid for by the U.S. Government," prompting swift and vicious condemnation from numerous experts and pundits across social media, many of whom called out the use of tax dollars for political advertising as blatantly illegal. Others also questioned the effectiveness of touting Trump at a time when his toxic approval ratings are making the midterms a nightmare for Republicans.

"This ad is both incredibly illegal and politically asinine. Kudos to everyone involved," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior White House adviser to Barack Obama and Pod Save America co-host, wrote in a post to X reacting to the clip.

"'Demolish the deep state' - Trump has overseen the most corrupt administration in modern history making billions of dollars for him and his friends while your costs go up," Sen. Andy Kim wrote, as part of an extensive breakdown of Trump's claims in the clip. "'Expel the warmongers from our government' - Trump started a war with Iran that has cost taxpayers billions and raised your gas prices to almost $5 a gallon. 'Rout the fake news media' - Trump's order banning news outlets from the White House was just struck down by a judge because it violated the First Amendment. And how much taxpayer money did the government spend on this ad?"

"A taxpayer-funded propaganda TV spot. This is the most shameless administration of our lifetime," former Republican congressman Justin Amash wrote in his own post.

"What’s crazy is it’s not that hard to for a White House to steer donors to an outside group who can run fluffer ads like this," conservative pollster and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell wrote. "But no, Trump and this administration wants to take the maximally corrupt route just to show you they can get away with it."

“'Cast out the communists' — …except when we’re rolling out the red carpet for them even as they provide surveillance info for the Iranians to target our servicemembers?" CNN host Jake Tapper wrote, in reference to the recent visit of Chinese Leader Xi Jinping.

"Our tax dollars are being spent to indulge the fantasies and to soothe the fragile ego of a narcissistic sociopath who is falling deeper and deeper into psychosis," conservative commentator George Conway wrote, echoing his recent assertions that Trump is suffering a severe break from reality.

"It’s important we now have documentation that the Republican Party has corrupted itself to this degree," MS NOW host Joe Scarborough wrote. "Republicans now support the Centralized State stealing taxpayers’ money to run ads for their political party."

Almost no one expected President Donald Trump's own backyard to be anything but safe for Republicans in this year's midterms, but according to a new breakdown from The i Paper, his disastrous leadership and ongoing "crisis" have put the MAGA stronghold state more and more in play.

Writing for the outlet on Sunday, veteran Washington correspondent Simon Marks dug into why even Florida, home to Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and increasingly seen as a resilient jewel in the GOP crown, is starting to make Republicans sweat heading into November.

"If there is one state in the U.S. that Republicans had thought was entirely safe terrain for them in November’s midterm elections, it was the Sunshine State of Florida," Marks wrote. "At the start of this year, Democrats gave no thought to the possibility of flipping the state and turning it blue. After all, their Republican opponents currently control 20 of Florida’s 28 seats in the House of Representatives, both seats in the U.S. Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion."

He added: "Democratic Party grandees had sensibly written it off. But suddenly, such is the American public’s disquiet over Donald Trump’s stewardship of the nation and the economic crisis that his war on Iran has ignited that even Florida is in play."

Signals about GOP uncertainty in Florida have been growing in number and intensity over the past few weeks. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a House Republican running for reelection in a largely Latino district that she previously won by 20 points in 2024, turned heads with a new ad attacking the president over his mass deportation agenda. Byron Donalds, the Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate in the state who once found himself on Trump's 2024 running mate shortlist, was also caught scrubbing mentions of the president from his campaign website.

An update from the revered election forecasting outlet, Cook Political Report, also recently shifted the Florida governor's race slightly in favor of Democratic nominee and outspoken Trump critic David Jolly, though the race remains "likely Republican." This came after a shock poll from the Miami Herald gave Jolly a five-point edge over Donalds.

"That Florida could now be a swing state should be setting off alarm bells in the White House," Marks added later. "Former Florida Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo told Politico on Friday that the party’s candidates were 'bracing for the worst.' The loss of Trump’s home state – and seat of his unofficial court at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach – would be an extraordinary and humiliating loss for the President. And Democrats know that if Trump’s party is in trouble there, it is facing a possible wipeout when the votes are counted all over the country in just over five weeks’ time."

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is so consistently scathing in her rebukes against President Donald Trump that the administration has tried to go around her whenever possible. Yet despite Jackson's well-known antipathy toward the president's policies, a legal expert is concerned that her dissent in a recent Supreme Court case favoring the president still underestimated the full scope of what he might try to do to steal the 2026 midterm elections.

Describing how the Supreme Court recently issued a ruling making it easier for Trump to purge voters he claims are non-citizens, elections attorney Marc Elias wrote for his Democracy Docket newsletter that "because federal law bars mass removals of voters in the 90 days before Election Day, Justice Jackson argues, the ruling 'will likely have minimal short-term impact, as States will at most conduct individualized voter-roll maintenance using the modified SAVE system.'"

He continued, "Let me begin by saying that I agree with Justice Jackson: federal law prohibits mass voter purges close to an election, and only individualized removals are permitted. I also agree with her that even these individual removals pose concrete harm to lawful voters and undermine free and fair elections."

Despite this area of agreement, however, Elias characterized Jackson as ignoring relevant recent history.

"The conservative justices added that they will consider the scope of the quiet period in a separate case scheduled for argument later this year, and that 'we do not need to decide it here,'" Elias wrote. "In that case, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, which the Court will hear in December, the RNC, backed by the Trump Justice Department, argues that Arizona may cancel the registrations of voters it deems noncitizens during the 90-day quiet period."

He added, "Put simply, Justice Jackson's 'bright side' depends on Republican state and local election officials following federal law, and on the Supreme Court holding firm if election deniers try to purge voters."

He concluded, "If the past is prologue, the signs are not hopeful."

Jackson has made other recent attempts to downplay the negative implications of her conservative peers' behavior. On Sunday, she also claimed they are not abusing the shadow docket, which allows them to issue opinions without explaining their reasoning, as often as they used to.

"I think it is a good and positive development," Jackson said, further elaborating that "because now, the public and also lower courts, who are charged with [the] responsibility of understanding what the court is doing and applying to a certain degree the court’s principles in future cases, really need some way to go about doing that.”

She added, “And it was not possible before in a world in which the court was not providing any explanation.”

President Donald Trump has gotten fond of using one particular "trick" to fool the global markets into acting like the economy is trending in the right direction, but according to a new analysis from The i Paper, that trick is now running headlong into its expiration date.

With the midterms set to arrive in mere weeks, Trump and the GOP are facing a voter backlash crisis as gas and diesel prices remain stubbornly high as a direct result of the president's Iran war, making longstanding concerns about affordability even worse as the cost of travel and transportation ripple out to the costs of everything else.

Writing for The i Paper on Sunday, reporter and columnist James Ball explained that Trump has gotten comfortable using the promise of an impending peace deal with Iran to convince global oil and stock markets to rally in his favor, even as no meaningful or durable deal emerged.

"[Time] and again, Trump would promise that a peace deal or a ceasefire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was going to be signed any day now. Time and again, global markets believed him. For most of the year, oil prices have been higher, but not dramatically so. Traders genuinely seemed to believe Trump would have the Iran war wrapped up long before the midterms – and, crucially, long before the northern hemisphere entered the winter months."

He added: "As a famous TV show once said, winter is coming. Countries have spent most of the year burning their oil and gas reserves, and they are now running low. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t open, and for a time the east-west pipeline across Saudi Arabia wasn’t working, either. Suddenly, the prospect of oil and gas shortages in the dead of winter looks all too real."

In the face of such a looming disaster, Ball noted that Trump "isn’t managing to promise peace deals quite as often as he used to," even as he tries to still "sound positive" about the war. His most recent claim is that a deal will be reached shortly after the midterms, "leading even the most credulous of observers to wonder why Trump would delay a popular peace deal until after ballots were cast." Left with little in the way of logic to grab on to, they have concluded "that maybe he doesn’t have a plan to end his oil crisis, after all."

"Most Americans are already deeply unhappy with Donald Trump and his administration’s performance, including millions of the people who voted for him just two years ago," Ball concluded. "But we may have seen nothing yet: if Trump doesn’t magic up a real deal, and soon, oil and gas will soar, inflation will rise with it, and his popularity will explore still new depths. Trump’s 'trust me' trick has got him through the summer. It will take much more to get Trump – and America – through the winter."

President Donald Trump's midterm convention was a bust for several reasons. It only pulled in three million viewers, well below the 25 million who watched a football game instead; the turnout was so sparse that Trump begged his audience not to go to the bathroom since media outlets might focus on the empty seats; and he closed one speech with a demand that his supporters literally pledge allegiance to him as a president.

Yet perhaps the most notable moment from the event was when Trump promised he would send checks of $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retained control of Congress after the midterms. The president presented this as a sort of bribe, implying that he would not support such checks unless he got what he wanted from the American people. Now a new poll finds Americans do not believe he would stay true to his word anyway.

Journalist G. Elliott Morris reported on this by breaking down his recent Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, which he fielded Sept. 16–21, and which set out to learn how Americans feel about Trump's $5,000 pledge.

"We ran a survey experiment where respondents were broken into three groups," Morris explained. "One third of respondents were asked whether they support 'sending $5,000 payments to American households,' full stop. A third were told Donald Trump proposed it. And a third got the deal as he conditioned it in Dallas: the checks go out if Republicans win in November."

Morris added, "When the payments were described as a neutral policy, 53 [percent] of adults said they supported them while 35 [percent] opposed them, a net of +18. When we told voters it was Trump’s idea, support ticked down to +12, a difference inside the margin of error. But when we described the checks as he actually offered them, voters were opposed, at 35 [percent] support and 54 [percent] oppose, net −18."

He acknowledged that it is not easy to poll people about specific policy subjects like this, since one must distinguish between their feelings about a policy proposal in the abstract and how they feel about that same proposal when it is linked to a specific politician.

"This type of thing is tricky to poll about, since people generally support transfers, but we had a reasonable belief the conditioning on GOP victory would turn voters off the idea," Morris explained.

Overall, Morris pointed out that the midterms convention did little more than reinforce in voters' minds that this election is a referendum on Trump's performance — and that this does not help the Republican cause.

"A convention built around Trump naturally makes the midterm all about Trump," Morris wrote. "If you’re a Republican running in a competitive district, this hurts you, because it makes the election all about the guy with a 34 [percent] approval rating."

A new breakdown from MS NOW revealed how, even as the conflict has seemed to have "no concrete goals in mind," the Iran war is having an unexpected consequence that could make Donald Trump a historically impactful president, in one of the ways he never wanted to be.

In a piece published Sunday morning, MS NOW reporter and columnist Hayes Brown argued that Trump might have "done the environment a favor" by waging his war against Iran, despite the fact that "it is hard to imagine Trump doing anything that benefits the climate." With the conflict continuing to drive gas prices into the stratosphere, new reports have found that global greenhouse emissions have made a noticeable decline as people the world over are forced to drive less.

"[According] to a Washington Post analysis of International Energy Agency data, that’s exactly what has happened," Brown explained. "The IEA initially predicted a big jump in emissions this year compared with last year. But energy shipments from the Middle East remain stymied by Tehran closing the Strait of Hormuz. That in turn has prompted a reduction in oil and gas consumption around the world, which has significantly reduced overall carbon emissions"

The Post's report detailed further: "The IEA analysis suggests global demand for oil in 2026 will decline 2.5 percent compared with last year. That would erase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by 42 million internal combustion engine cars. And the IEA had initially projected the world’s appetite for oil and gas would grow significantly over last year, so much so that the difference between its January projections and what is actually happening is the equivalent of avoiding the emissions from 103 million cars."

Brown added that he could "not stress enough" the degree to which this outcome was not intentional by Trump, given his long-established obsession with pushing for greater oil production and consumption, summed up by his oft-repeated energy motto, "Drill, baby, drill." Ironically, he noted that this is not the first time something like this has happened on Trump's watch, as a result of his negligent leadership.

"Trump has appointed a man who is, at best, climate apathetic to head the Environmental Protection Agency and an outright climate skeptic to oversee the newest draft of the National Climate Assessment," Brown wrote. "As a result, major regulations intended to reduce emissions and initiatives to promote cleaner energy have been gutted and branded as part of a 'Green New Scam.'"

He added: "What makes this case even more intriguing is that Trump was also in office the last time we saw such a major dip in global carbon output. In early 2020, when COVID-19 was just beginning to take hold, America was woefully unprepared for a pandemic. After Trump spent weeks publicly denying the virus was a major threat, it became clear that the administration was ill equipped to effectively contain it. The resulting nationwide quarantines were emulated on a global scale, prompting a massive slowdown in economic output. With that reduced demand, fossil fuel consumption and the resultant CO2 emissions also plummeted. Studies would show that for a moment, as the saying went, nature was healing — but only for a moment. As lockdowns ended and economies came back to life, demand rose again to undo most of the progress that had been made."

Republicans in Congress have bowed overwhelmingly to President Donald Trump, rarely challenging him and instead forfeiting their legislative prerogatives by allowing him to dictate their agenda. Even as the president's plummeting poll numbers put them at political risk for doing so, most Republicans in Congress still focus on remaining loyal to Trump.

Now a recent study in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics has figured out why.

"Congress is portrayed as compliant with President Donald J. Trump’s agenda because he is intimidating its members," wrote Syracuse University professor emeritus Jeffrey M. Stonecash in the study. "This neglects an alternative explanation that focuses on the increased congruence of presidential and congressional electoral bases. Trump is the beneficiary of a geographical realignment that took decades and has created a high degree of overlap of the two bases."

He added, "This analysis tracks that process from 1952 to 2024. It has produced a situation in which policy concerns overlap and encourage congressional compliance."

In his conclusion, Stonecash wrote that "it has taken a long time, but the Republican Party now enjoys considerable unity of electoral bases and purpose. Donald Trump clearly pressures members to accept his agenda, but his advantage is that he starts with a congressional party that shares his electoral base more than any other Republican presidents have experienced. Poll after poll show that his support among Republicans is strong."

Speaking to PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan, Stonecash said that "the media presents congressional compliance with Trump as due to fear of him. One man has intimidated Congress and abolished the separation of powers. While there is a grain of truth to that, what we are witnessing is primarily the result of a lengthy realignment that has created a geographical overlap of presidential and congressional electoral bases."

He continued. “That base is conservative socially and economically.”

Speaking with AlterNet in August, cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan explained that Trump supporters remain extremely loyal to him because they are attracted to his ability to demonize individuals who are not in fact responsible for their suffering, but who they wish to believe is.

"We are social beings, and we're emotional beings primarily," Hassan wrote. "So a key point in my BITE [Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional] model of authoritarian control is information control. I emphasize how these destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time. And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create 'the other,' to demonize."

Also in August, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky added that many Trump supporters engage in trollish behavior against non-supporters because of a "dark triad' of psychological traits.

"If you look at internet trolls and their personality profiles, you find that they score very high on what's called the dark triad of personality: psychopathy, Machiavellianism and [narcissism]," Lewandowsky explained.