"Over time, fatigue, partisan anger, and political neccesity had hardened Republicans. They were developing the inddifeence to protect a tyrant. What these politicians needed, was a rational for this increasingly militan devotion. So they began to convince themselves that the president's enemies were the greater threat. More and more Republicans told one another, and came to believe, that Democrats would do anything to destroy the country. And that paranoid fantasy gave Republicans the justification they needed to do anything in Trump's defense."