What Does It Take From Trump Voters to Realize they Were Conned?

In the wake of yesterday's damning Congressional hearings that confirmed that the FBI is investigating possible - I'd say likely - collusion between Der Trumpenführer's campaign and Russian agents/military intelligence, delusional supporters nonetheless turned out at a rally in Kentucky.  It is breath taking that self-styled "real Americans" continue to fall for the ploys of a carnival barker who may be guilty of treason.   Apparently, these people are willing to believe just about anything rather than admit that they were duped by a con artist.  And, it's not as if evidence of Trump's dishonest and mental health issues were not on display both before and during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Frighteningly, many Congressional Republicans are little better as they attempt to circle the wagons around a malignant narcissist who may well lead the GOP to disaster.  A story in the New York Times looks at Der Trumpenführer's continued behavior that is seeming only making his situation worse. Here are highlights:

WASHINGTON — President Trump began Monday as he has started so many other presidential mornings — by unleashing a blistering Twitter attack on critics who suggested his 2016 campaign colluded with the Russians.

By the afternoon the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, had systematically demolished his arguments in a remarkable public takedown of a sitting president. Even a close ally of Mr. Trump, Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the House Intelligence Committee chairman, conceded that “a gray cloud” of suspicion now hung over the White House by the end of the day’s hearings.

But it’s the obsessiveness and ferocity of Mr. Trump’s pushback against the Russian allegations, often untethered from fact or tact, that is making an uncertain situation worse.

Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party whose fate is now tightly tied to his.

Mr. Trump’s fixation on fighting is undermining his credibility at a time when he needs to toggle from go-it-alone executive action to collaborative congressional action on ambitious health care, budget and infrastructure legislation.

A Gallup poll released Monday found Mr. Trump with an abysmal 37 percent approval rating . . . .

The problem, from the perspective of Mr. Trump’s beleaguered political fire brigade, is that the president insists on dealing with crises by creating new ones — so surrogates, repeating talking points the president himself ignores, say they often feel like human shields. . . . . this president, a proponent of do-it-yourself crisis communications with boundless self-confidence in his capacity to shape the story, seems determined to hug his Russian hand grenade.

“His tweeting defines him, and not in a good way,” said Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Voters not only think Trump’s use of Twitter is unpresidential, they also see the tone and content of his tweets as an indication that he is lacking in self-control.” . . . Mr. Comey seemed to tacitly agree.

One can only hope that this national nightmare ends soon and that Mike Pence goes down in the collapse of Trump's insane and irresponsible regime.  When this happens, those who prostituted themselves to Trump need to likewise be held accountable.