When Capitol building cleaning crews were removing feces from the hallowed halls of Congress after the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, no one imagined that Donald Trump would be leading the 2024 Republican presidential primary field by a 48-point margin just three years later.

Two overarching reasons help explain this unusual circumstance.

First, his “Make America Great Again” base is immovable. Trump knew that already on Jan. 23, 2016, when at a rally in Iowa, he famously stated, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters. Okay?” This is, for example, why Trump can be so comfortable with careless conversations about the executive orders he wants to sign at the beginning of his second term, telling Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator, "other than day one."

Second, May poll data found that six out of ten Republicans still think the 2020 election was illegitimate. No wonder, since at his Iowa rally last Saturday, Trump repeatedly told the crowd that Democrats “rigged and stole the 2020 election.”

This delusion has poisoned Trump voters’ minds in seven distinct ways.

1. Deceptive Rationalization

Whatever Trump says or does — no matter the evidence to the contrary — loyal followers normalize, downplay, excuse, and rationalize his behaviors, speech, and legal issues. Indeed, any of dozens of instances of his controversial behavior would have doomed any traditional presidential candidate before June 2015, when he first descended the Trump Tower escalator.

No “traditional” presidential candidate could have survived two........

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