...and will follow the "conventional wisdom" all the way off the cliff. There are still opinion giving talking heads who won't say Trump lies, when even straight journalists at this point should have no problem stating that basic and obvious fact.

Trump became the successful progeny of George Wallace and David Duke by virtue of having familiar, TV constructed persona of a New York businessman as opposed to a Southern-based bigot. He eschewed the dog-whistle for the bullhorn, and had no compunction about being as publicly nasty as a smirking chimp like Lindsey Graham is in private. His odious combination of Archie Bunker grafted onto John Gotti has succeeded way beyond what Trump even thought was possible, and like most assholes who've worked in television (as opposed to the artists and visionaries in that medium) Trump doubled down on what he thought led to his success by bring radical elements of white supremacy, Christian Nationalism, fascism, and bigotry to his second term, along with kakistocrat kooks like RFK, Jr., Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump doesn't give a shit about his standing in polls; they're irrelevant to him. As long as he has the customary 33 percent of mossbacks and bigots that will scare enough people in his party from opposing him, he's good. The thing that matters to Trump is the graft and the grift. Becoming president was the failing upward of a lifetime for a man who was raised to embrace larceny and cheating as the only pertinent skills for an adult to have. He's a racist bum, a crook, and a con man, who's become addled, distracted, and more and more intolerable to people who would tolerate a lot as long as their ox wasn't being hacked to death. Until the politicians and folks running to be one by holding Trump close to their bosoms begin to fall in huge numbers, no one should be convinced the national nightmare is nearly over.