I don’t follow her closely enough to know how or when it happened, but somewhere along the way Ann Althouse’s comment section became a relentlessly pro-Trump cesspool that is a great introduction into how the MAGA hive-mind is operating at any given time. That’s why I paid her site a rare visit when I saw she had written about latest New Yorker piece on the Kanye West (Ye)/Nick Fuentes meetup with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The article, penned by Isaac Chotiner, takes advantage of an inconvenient fact for the right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) which had the extreme bad timing to closely precede the anti-Semitic supper in Palm Beach with a great show of support for the twice-impeached ex-president.

Two weeks ago, ZOA presented Trump with its Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion “for his unprecedented accomplishments on behalf of Israel and the Jewish-American community,” including brokering the Abraham Accords.

The award has only been granted to a handful of world leaders, including former British prime minister Winston Churchill, former US president Harry Truman, Israeli founding father and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, and former prime minister Golda Meir.

But now the president of ZOA, Morton Klein, is expressing confusion.

It makes no sense. Somebody who’s such an extraordinary friend of Israel, whose daughter is an Orthodox Jew, whose grandchildren are Orthodox Jews—I cannot explain why he would want to have dinner with an overt anti-Semite and dinner with a white-supremacist Jew-hater, an ugly, ugly scum like Nick Fuentes. And Trump says, “I didn’t know who it was.” Even if I take him at his word, that he didn’t know who Fuentes was, fine, now he knows. Why doesn’t he say, “Fuentes is a despicable scum whose beliefs have no place in the United States of America”?

I don’t need to psychoanalyze Trump for the umpteenth time. The point here is how his supporters are reacting the Chotiner’s article. The primary reaction is a predictable “whataboutism” that shifts the conversation to the Democrats by mentioning Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, of course, Hunter Biden.

The next three most popular defenses involve turning Trump’s defects into virtues. In the first, he was only showing loyalty to Ye, a friend in crisis who has been supportive in the past. In the second, it’s a critical part of Trump’s appeal that he refuses to dance to the media’s tune and refusing to give in to “cancel culture” and apologize for the dinner is exactly why they love him. In the third, Trump’s lack of guest vetting is admitted to be a major flaw but basically akin to NBA Hall-of-Fame Center’s Shaquille O’Neal’s incredibly low lifetime free throw percentage. In other words, their hero has an Achilles heel, but so what? He’s still the best to ever play the game.

As for any effort to resolve the cognitive dissonance expressed by ZOA’s Klein, they simply insist that Trump has proven he loves Jews and that’s the end of the debate. And if that isn’t good enough, commenters just close they eyes and ears.

Everyone on the right is called a white supremacist Nazi, Klan member. I’m sure I’d be called that if I had a larger presence on social media (or any presence). So when I hear accusations like that, to me they fall flat. They are meaningless.

And frankly, I don’t care enough about Nick Fuentes to look him up and see if he’s what the Left claims he is. They’ve cried ‘wolf’ about so many conservatives being Klan members for so long, I don’t even pay attention to it anymore.

So, this is how impervious the MAGA crowd is to anything that might reflect poorly on their leader. Which is important when we anticipate his eventual indictment on federal criminal charges. At The Bulwark, A.B. Stoddard warns that Trump will pursue the Republican Party’s presidential nomination but, if he is denied, he will burn the Grand Old Party to the ground. And if he is facing prosecution along the way, well, the Republican officeholders and candidates will have to act exactly like the commenters at Ann Althouse’s shitty blog.

…if there is a reckoning and Trump faces justice, are his Republican opponents going to defend the Biden Justice Department or Fani Willis, and tell Republican primary voters that the charges are credible and Trump’s conduct was criminal? Will they tell the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to chill out and stop threatening the lives of law enforcement and prosecutors and judges and their families?

How could they? These same people spent the last five years defending Trump from “witch hunts” and “fake news” and all the rest. They helped prime Republican voters to believe this stuff.

Trump understands that anyone who dares to get into the race with him will have to agree that yes, it’s all a political persecution and Trump is innocent and that the best way to own the libs is to vote for him again. He’s the best middle finger available.They will have to say this because if they don’t, then they will either lose the primary or lose some sizable percentage of Republican voters.

I’m not sure things will play out exactly this way, but it’s definitely true that Trump has no use for the Republican Party or anyone or thing else if they’re not loyally advancing his interests. The criminal justice system could cut his presidential campaign short, but if he’s still a free man (and even, perhaps, if he is not) and he does not look like he’s going to win the nomination, he will quit and run as an independent. If that’s not possible, he will make sure to absolutely poison his base against the Republican candidate.

And most observers, me included, believe this would be a fatal blow that all but assures that the Democratic candidate is victorious. So, the GOP is held hostage by Trump. They either stick with him both as a candidate and a criminal defendant, or they receive a long-deserved comeuppance. This is what circling the drain looks like.