OK, look...I can't be the only one here who thinks a 39% approval rating for Trump is WAY TOO EFFING HIGH, right?

[Ocelot II]

3. MAGA is a cult, not a political movement. It's very difficult to deprogram cult members

because they are so emotionally and psychologically invested in their membership in the cult and in their belief in the cult leader. Jim Jones got hundreds of people to kill themselves even after he had been abusing cult members for years (the only real difference between Jim Jones and Trump is that Trump would charge for the Kool-Aid). No matter what kind of heinous misdeeds Trump commits, there will be some percentage of Americans who will support him - either because they don't believe he did those things ("fake news," of course), or because they think it's just fine that he did them because reasons. And there's also the principle of sunk costs - once you've invested heavily in something, financially or otherwise, you're very reluctant to admit you were scammed and walk away from it. People don't like to admit they were wrong, and especially that they were wrong about something they were completely committed to. So although the cult will lose some people at the margins, the hard core, ultimately maybe 30%, will never budge.