This baffling disconnect exposes exactly what makes MAGA so blind

Every once in a while, someone comes along who explains the Trump phenomenon better than a thousand polls, focus groups and New York Times diner interviews ever could.

Meet Eric Deters.

Deters is a Kentucky attorney, former congressional candidate and longtime Trump donor who has apparently reached the conclusion that Kimberly Guilfoyle — Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée and Trump’s ambassador to Greece, who was publicly ordered to resign Tuesday — is, to use his own description, a “wicked, evil person.”

According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, Deters says Guilfoyle asked him to wire $100,000 directly to her American Express account shortly before her 2025 confirmation hearing. The alleged messages are extraordinary. Guilfoyle reportedly told him the payment wouldn’t “show up anywhere” if he wired it directly to Amex and urged him to stop creating a paper trail.

Her attorney disputes the authenticity of the messages. But Deters says the proposed arrangement was “absolutely” a quid pro quo.

Deters says he had already paid Guilfoyle hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years and expected her to use her Trump-world connections to help him with various matters. He now calls her a “grifter” who failed to deliver.

You might imagine this experience caused Deters to reconsider his allegiance to the political movement that produced Guilfoyle.

You would be adorable.

Despite describing Guilfoyle, and the entire Trump family, in terms generally reserved for Batman villains, Deters remains an unwavering Trump supporter.

And there, in one man, is the contradiction at the heart of MAGA.

For years, we’ve been told Trump voters support him because they hate corruption. They’re sick of Washington insiders. They despise elites enriching themselves through political connections. They want somebody to “drain the swamp.”

Yet here is a Trump donor claiming that someone at the center of Trump’s orbit tried to shake him down for $100,000 while dangling access to powerful government officials — and his response is essentially: These people are horrible. They’re not just “the swamp.” They’re the entire Everglades. Anyway, where do I vote for them again?”

At some point, we have to consider the possibility that corruption isn’t actually the dealbreaker we’ve been told it is.

Neither is character.

Neither is hypocrisy.

Neither is grifting.

So what is?

For a significant part of Trump’s coalition, the attraction appears to be something deeper and more visceral: Trump identifies enemies and promises to punish them. Immigrants. Protesters. “Woke” institutions. Urban America. Political opponents. Anyone who can be portrayed as taking something away from the people Trump tells are the country’s rightful owners.

Race has been part of that appeal from the beginning. Even JD Vance acknowledged, before becoming Trump’s running mate, that some Trump supporters voted for him “for racist reasons.”

That doesn’t mean every Trump voter is racist. Politics is never that simple. People vote based on economics, abortion, guns, immigration, party loyalty and dozens of other considerations.

But Deters presents a harder question.

What do you call it when a voter believes the people running his political movement are corrupt, lying, dishonest grifters — and enthusiastically supports them anyway?

Maybe ideology can explain some of it. Maybe tribalism explains more.

But perhaps the ugliest explanation deserves more attention than we’ve been willing to give it.

Racism is a powerful aphrodisiac.

Powerful enough, apparently, to make even a $100,000 shakedown easier to swallow.