No doubt Donald Trump is a master of international chicanery, but it is hard to pinpoint exactly what he is. Like the sea-god Proteus of classical myth, he changes each time someone gets close to nailing him.
A third of the country believes everything Trump says despite glaring untruths documented in videotapes. He holds secret meetings with questionable world leaders and tells the country to take his word for what transpired. A third of the country does just that. The rest of America flounders in the sea as it tries to grab Proteus.
The Trump base is indeed a large group of believers who are themselves a mix. Some believe in the man as he presents himself while others no doubt agree with his views about society. Even before the election, the base was unbothered by Trump's lies, licentiousness and even criminality, as in the Trump University confidence scam. The base believed in Trump as much as the faithful of any religion do, except that Trump is obviously no religious leader.
Catholics, for example, believe in the Church dogma and they take the Pope at his word on his say so. But the Pope is infallible only when he speaks ex officio, not when he tweets, and it is a safe bet the College of Cardinals wouldn't elect a Pope who was a documented liar. Catholics, therefore have a valid reason for the faith they hold in the Church's leaders, however some may fall short of the ideal.
Likewise, members of a cult adhere to their leader and to carrying out the leader's directives, however absurd. The Trump base has a touch of sect style allegiance to Trump. Maybe they would back him even if he shot someone in plain sight for no reason, but it is questionable how many would drink arsenic kool aid to appease this leader, particularly since Trump fans seem to prefer mass killings rather than annihilating themselves. Even more unlikely is the possibility that any Trump toady, however beholden, would slaughter innocents like Charles Manson's followers did..
Donald Trump is clearly no Pontiff and no cult leader. Yet the base adheres to him zealously and the key to their ardor must lie in his skill as master con man. He has honed those skills over a lifetime of failures. With the powers of the US Presidency as his disposal, Trump will be thwarted by only the sharpest detectors and clearest exposers of con behaviors and forms of scams.
This president should have been impeached before he wss ever elected, probably with the help of even greater scam artist Vladimir Putin, trained by the Russian KGB. However overdue, impeachment may not be an option at this stage of his presidency, but the base may be liberated from their trance as marks.
The marks of a scam artist are vulnerable to grandiose promises that make them hungry for satisfaction and blind to realities that stand in the way. Trump first warned of marauding immigrants, then promised a wall to keep the country safe. The base believes in the Wall, Trump gets the Wall for them hell or high water, and the base doesn't see the reality that Trump tactics are making the threat of foreigners worse.
The same can be said of the Trump promise to drain the swamp. The faithful see the dismantling of the political machinery. They do not see that the real swamp creatures are given jobs in higher cabinet positions.
The base cannot be blamed for being marks in the Trump scam of the country. After all, a lifetime of apprenticeship has primed him to lie without flinching, to speak authoritatively about topics beyond him, to debase opponents and praise toadies, to unleash it all in a fusillade that has level heads spinning for traction on any one thread, But the country as a whole has not fallen for the con. They just need to expose the machinery of how chicanery works in a complex global world.