Drug tolerance occurs when a drug user experiences a lesser reaction to a drug after its repeated use. One solution – although a possibly dangerous and self-defeating one – is to take even more of that same drug as its effects decline. The horde that fanatically follows Trump requires ever-more fantastic claims to produce the same emotional response. Trump and his operatives understand this well (even if they understand little else), and so they craft crazier and crazier claims to excite their needy, addicted base.
Jack Shafer writes about this in Why Trump Is Peddling Extra-Strength Conspiracy Theories (‘The president is doubling his dose of outrageous claims because he worries his audience isn’t responding like it used to’):
Has Trump really turned up the heat or have we just been sitting in his saucepan so long it just feels that way? My intuition tells me that both his supporters and critics have grown numb to his previous rhetorical excesses and need for him to cross new boundaries, violate new taboos, and break fresh panes of glass in order remain engaged. Then there’s the matter of his Trump’s recent dip in the polls, reportedly putting him in a “foul mood.” He knows he can’t charm his way back to better numbers, so he’s trying furiously to stay in the public eye by displaying more ferocity. And don’t forget the Biden problem. “Sleepy Joe,” as Trump often taunts him, has been hiding like a possum in his basement where Trump can’t get to him, and that’s got to frustrate him.
So he keeps harping on China as the responsible party for the 80,000-plus coronavirus deaths in the United States. While offering absolutely no proof for the charge, Trump obscures his own neglect of the pandemic and misdirects culpability to a foreign country. These techniques might not work on you, but that doesn’t bother Trump. His hardcore supporters are the target of the tweets, speeches, pressers and conspiracy theories. The more he does to make himself look persecuted and reviled by the “elites” and the press, the more heroic he appears to his base.
Trump’s fanatical band – bund, one might say – needs stronger and longer hits.
None of his conspiracy theories are doing any outreach for him. He knows that. He also knows that he isn’t going to win in November, so his entire strategy is to keep the base riled up enough to go to the streets for him.
He will not leave the White House voluntarily. He is specifically preparing his troops for “ACW(American Civil War)2: Electric Boogaloo”, or the “Boog”, as his more militant fans call it. Despite the catchy label, they are quite serious about this.
We are not going to get out from under Trump without pain.
if mr sunlamp is not in office then new york will f#$k him with a zillion lawsuits
Having wrongly gone so far, self-preservation compels him to go wrongly farther still. As for New York, in a conflict between NY AG Letitia James and Donald Trump, the odds will (rightly for many reasons) favor James.