Inside the cult-like psychology that keeps Trump allies loyal

After President Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Salon's Amanda Marcotte — in a biting article published on March 6 — argued that she "excelled in debasing herself to please her boss" only to get fired anyway. Noem, Marcotte observed, even altered her physical appearance to please Trump. But in the end, according to Marcotte, Noem's loyalty was rewarded with a firing via social media.

Marcotte revisited the subject of MAGA loyalty to Trump during an appearance on The New Republic's "The Daily Blast" podcast posted on March 9. Host Greg Sargent noted that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's "cult-like obsequiousness gets dialed up to 11" whenever the "news gets particularly bad for Donald Trump," and Marcotte explained the "psychology" behind Leavitt and other Trump loyalists.

Marcotte told Sargent, "I think at the end of the day, the most important psychology that keeps these people on board is just that admitting that Trump is bad or wrong or a failure is admitting that all those people who, for a decade, have been telling you that you made a mistake were right. And what's weird is the longer this drags on, the harder it is for them to let go without some kind of offramp. And I will say, if there ever was an offramp, I do kind of think the Iran war might be it — because again, they don't want another [George] Bush."

Marcotte added, "Trump ran pretty explicitly the first time as: I am not another Bush. He made fun of the Bush that was in the race, and here he is, another Bush."

Trump's loyalists, Marcotte emphasized, are so invested in defending him that they refuse to publicly acknowledge all the things that are wrong with his administration — from Iran to the economy.

Marcotte told Sargent, "I agree that (Leavitt's) first and foremost motivation is making her boss feel good so she keeps her job. I would love to like look inside her head and see if she actually thinks it makes a difference to say these obsequious, like laughable things — if she thinks she's actually persuading anybody, or if it's just Trump, her boss, like managing her boss' feelings, because it might just be that…. I think we're seeing a lot of people who are behaving like they don't know what to do. They don't know what's going to happen next."

Marcotte continued, "They're at the whims of a mercurial boss who may not be remembering super well what he said one minute to the next. And I think that there is no plan here. I think that they're just kind of winging it in the most like ridiculous way."

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