Donald Trump always demands public adulation, and he probably feels that it should be peaking now. He’s realized such longtime conservative dreams as damaging America’s social safety net and cementing a grossly unequal tax code. He’s bombed Iran with no immediate repercussions, even if it was more of a glancing blow to that country’s nuclear ambitions. He’s dropped border crossings significantly. He’s benefiting from a Supreme Court catering to his every wish. He’s even announced an investment in, and advance market commitment for, a rare earth minerals mining company that the Biden administration’s industrial-policy leaders would have gladly implemented.

You don’t even have to believe that Trump is hiding some sort of self-incrimination, though it certainly feels that way, to understand MAGA’s disappointment. They wrongly built up Trump as someone other than just another politician. They failed to understand that there’s a big difference between accountability and revenge, and that Trump is only interested in the latter. Accountability suggests a punishment that fits the crime, and in 21st-century America we have never seen such a thing.