We’ve seen Trump’s base referred to as a cult so often that it’s almost taken for granted. The profound strangeness of their actions barely even registers anymore, and someone might look a total freak (like a woman with sleeve tattoos carrying a machine gun outside a polling place who would’ve been straight-up mocked in Alabama only a few years ago) and just sort-of tune it out.
These people have openly embraced QAnon, Sandy Hook conspiracies, “CoVid as a hoax” conspiracies, Pizzagate, Obamagate, Birtherism, George Soros being the most powerful man in the universe, Hillary Clinton being the Russian asset, Joe Biden having Seal Team 6 killed to disguise that Bin Laden is still alive, etc.
From the moment Trump took office and lied about his inauguration crowd size being bigger than Obama’s, his base has not shown a willingness to go against him on anything.
You could give literally 100s of examples (having the national weather service lie about where hurricanes would hit because he asked them to, their willingness to pretend injecting bleach was a joke and hydroxychloroquine actually works, his abusive relationship with Jeff Sessions) but I’d like to quote Trump himself when he said “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they’d still vote for me.”
Maybe Joe Scarborough was on to something when he compared Trump’s base to the Salem witch trials.
Trump’s said “Lock her up” so much about Hillary and Gretchen Whitmer (who was almost kidnapped by a Michigan militia and Trump still goes after her), is there any doubt they’d literally start killing women (witches) if he asked them to?
“In order to save Democracy, we need to immediately execute Nancy Pelosi, Gretchen Whitmer, Stormy Daniels, and whoever cancelled ‘The Apprentice’ at NBC.”