Just as surely as Trump Derangement Syndrome has overtaken some on the left, there is an equal and opposite pathology on the right, where the Cult of Trump has turned bad-faith apologia and backwards rationalization into a cottage industry—and now, into an art form. Trump’s humiliating performance in Helsinki posed a challenge, of course, but one that the president’s most unswerving disciples gladly rose to meet.

Trump’s own defense of his behavior opposite Vladimir Putin was perhaps the least persuasive: that he had merely stumbled over an intended double negative when he asserted, following a ruthless fusillade against the legitimacy of American intelligence agencies, that he doubted Russia was behind the 2016 cyber-attack on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. (Some Trump supporters online dismissed this explanation as a hostage statement, with a few quasi-seriously suggesting that the lights accidentally went off during his press conference as a signal to the true believers that he was under duress.) More compelling, at least within Trumpworld, were the alternative narratives quickly devised to defuse the escalating political crisis.

The most popular theories all begin with the assumption that Trump, being incapable of doing wrong, must be playing five-dimensional chess. “The way to prevent Putin from ‘meddling in our future elections,’ is to make him believe GOOD relations with the U.S. are worth more than BAD relations with the U.S.,” explained Bill Mitchell, one of the most zealous pro-Trump commentators on the Internet. “If Trump had gone after Putin in Helsinki,” he continued, “the Media would have declared Trump just admitted Russia stole the election and he is illegitimate. By walking it back here, he saves face for the Intelligence Community while stealing the #Media’s gotcha moment. He planned ALL of this.”

Better relations with Russia are the goal, after all—this the pro-Trump community can agree on. Whether they interfered in the 2016 election, as the U.S. intelligence community has concluded, is another matter. “An analysis that was made without evidence by a known group of anti-Trump bureaucrats,” wrote MAGA vanguardist Jack Posobiec on Monday, shortly after Trump dissed his intelligence agencies, but shortly before he backtracked and said he misspoke. The rest of the MAGA-verse, however, embrace a more realpolitik view of things. “You act like you’re surprised that the Russians act like Russians, O.K.? They do this stuff all the time and no one is approving of it!” Kurt Schlichter, a diehard Trump columnist for Townhall.com, exclaimed on Fox News. But, as the thinking goes, the only way to prevent Putin from further messing with America is to embrace him tighter.

“Look, I’m literally a Cold Warrior. I was literally in Germany during the end of the Cold War, I have no illusions about the Russians. I helped train Ukrainians. But peace is better than war,” Schlichter said earlier. “And all this crazy talk about this is an act of war—and going onto, ‘This is treason’—is dumb. I think it’s going to hurt the Democrats.”


Indeed, as the populist anti-interventionists explain, Trump’s lusty embrace of Putin (and rejection of NATO) is the only thing standing between America and World War III—an inevitable cataclysm had Clinton been elected. ”Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump point-blank in an interview that aired Tuesday night, suggesting that the world would be better off allowing the Southeastern European country to slip under Putin’s thumb. “I understand what you’re saying, I’ve asked the same question,” Trump responded. “You know, Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. . . . They are very aggressive people. They may get aggressive and, congratulations, you’re in World War III.” The next morning, a banner headline on Breitbart read, “Democrats, Establishment Media Push War with Russia.”

The anti-war talking point seemed to have the most currency Wednesday as the media whipped into a frenzy again over Trump’s claim (contra his own director of national intelligence) that Russia has stopped trying to interfere in U.S. elections. “Electing Trump stopped World War 3 with Russia,” noted Mike Cernovich, the right-wing lifestyle guru and occasional reporter. “Lots of trillions of dollars not going to the media and their defense-industry buddies.”

The money trail, naturally, leads to Hillary Clinton. “Look at the outrage, the selective outrage from the left, because it would almost seem as if that is what they want,” Fox commentator Tomi Lahren opined Wednesday on Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends, referring to the left’s histrionics as Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Would you like him to work towards diplomacy, or world peace, or would you like him to be aggressive towards Russia because Hillary Clinton lost the election?”

Trump, apparently, was listening: shortly after Lahren’s segment, he tweeted out her talking point nearly verbatim.

The media offered another reliable foil, for those more tribal than conspiracy-minded. “In a very real sense, in the eyes of Trump fans, even those who aren’t part of ‘Cult 45,’ the mainstream news media has become the little boy who cried ‘Wolff,’” conservative commentator John Ziegler, who had condemned Trump’s remarks regardless, wrote on Mediaite. “Nothing bad they say about him is ever going to be fully believed again.” Fox host Sean Hannity, seething on the set of his prime-time television show, offered a more concentrated formulation, calling the post-Helsinki freakout the “single worst 24 hours in the history of your mainstream media.” Journalists, he proclaimed, were being “self-righteous, sanctimonious, and delusional.”


Hannity continued, apoplectic. “We have Holocaust comparisons, Pearl Harbor references, called for revolution in this country, and much more,” he said, playing a deluge of clips from MSNBC and CNN with talking heads saying the same thing. “I’m normally kind of immune to the media’s daily dose of feigned moral outrage, but this is sick and it’s now pathological. Really sick,” Hannity reacted. “Now this is not news, these people are not journalists, these are not news channels, what you just saw is nothing but left wing propaganda misinformation. It’s just that plain, obvious, and simple.” (His next guest, radio host Mark Levin, fully agreed with Hannity, adding that the media was “full of psychopaths” who dismissed their own allies’ dalliances with Russia, and that of course Trump could not criticize Putin shortly after a two-hour meeting.)

Perhaps, others concluded, 72-year-old Trump had merely been cranky after a grueling 10-day journey across Europe, leading his guard to slip and his true feelings about the Russia investigation emerge. “The president has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations—what’s he supposed think?” asked Senator Rand Paul, earning himself an approving Trump tweet in response. Former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka echoed Paul’s statement: ”I’m not saying it’s the best press conference he ever gave, but I can tell you, because I saw it when I was in the Oval with him, he’s just fed up with this Russia-collusion absurdity. And if you see the way they’re mixing up the Mueller investigation on collusion with the question of the election tampering by these G.R.U. agents, he’s just had enough.” Trump, he added, is “just being a human being.”