For most Republicans to acknowledge—to others and even to themselves—what Trump truly is and still stay loyal to him would create enormous cognitive dissonance. Their mind won’t allow them to go there; instead, they find ways to ease the inner conflict. And so they embrace conspiracy theories to support what they desperately want to believe—for example, that the election was stolen, or that the investigation into Russian ties to the 2016 Trump campaign was a “hoax,” or that Joe Biden has committed impeachable offenses. They indulge in whataboutism and catastrophism—the belief that society is on the edge of collapse—to justify their support for Trump. They have a burning psychological need to rationalize why, in this moment in history, the ends justify the means.
