But for their base it has worked overall, as they don't operate on facts and have been trained to dismiss facts as the "deep state" working against them. It's all theater, they 100% don't want to do the work even if they had a case, it just to put shit out there that the base ingests without any follow up, and then passes it on as fact (but the kind they can believe).
Exactly. It should have crazy academic value, to study a cult of this size and power, and it's rise (and hopefully demise) right out in the open for everyone to see. Normally they have been regulated to some "compound" where they are discouraged by the leader from interacting with the rest of society. This cult is trying to take society/religion over. If it wasn't for all the fascism the Trump cult would be fascinating with the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance required to walk around in everyday life, with free access to everything in the "outside world", and still eat up all the leader guys shit and beg for more.