Over the same period that much of the press has carefully tiptoed around the “r” word there have been dozens of stories about Trump’s support among Christians. Despite his philandering. Despite his foul mouth. Despite his eager avarice. Despite his readiness to deliver a lie even if the truth would serve. The stories of Trump’s support among his religious base emphasize the willingness to overlook his personal faults so long as he holds up their “religious freedom.”

It took some time for an agreed-on image to emerge, but now there are regular stories that declare Trump a new “King Cyrus”—an outsider who nonetheless recognized the plight of the godly and helped restore them to the promised land. Once that narrative set in, it became the go-to reference for not just the many, many channels of evangelical programming on cable, but also AM radio and Fox. The “uncanny” resemblance between Trump and Cyrus rated a two-day special from the back- from-prison Jim Baker. The “unfolding prophecy” of Trump has already made it into print in multiple books.

The Cyrus model is a relief to the media on both sides of the Christian/supposedly secular broadcasting dial. It frees Trump to be Trump—after all, Cyrus was the pagan ruler of a Persian empire, but he was still a biblical hero and the “patron” of the Hebrews. It’s a relief to evangelical leaders who had initially tried to fit Trump into the robes of King David and discovered that even that remarkably low bar remained a tough standard for Trump.

Combined with the economic anxiety model, the evangelicals-for-Trump gives license to the claims that Trump is riding a wave of “populism.” One where his supporters, with enough squinting, bear some resemblance to the kind of Prairie Populism that brought yeoman farmers and downtrodden workers to line up behind William Jennings Bryan. As Trump tweeted just this week “the forgotten men & women WON. I’m president.”

But Trump’s populism has a darker base. Or rather, one that’s decidedly more monotone.

In political science, populism is the idea that society is separated into two groups at odds with one another - "the pure people" and "the corrupt elite", according to Cas Mudde, author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction.

If there’s any doubt, for Donald Trump, “pure” means white. It’s not working class people who support Trump. It’s white people. It’s not evangelical Christians who support Donald Trump. It’s white evangelical Christians.

A peer-reviewed study conducted by Diana Mutz at the University of Pennsylvania showed clearly what many had said from the beginning.

Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. … Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.

Trump voters were not driven by economic anxiety. They were driven by the feeling that the status of white Americans was being diminished. But as satisfying as it is to see that documented and analyzed in detail, it’s still something that’s ignored in most media reports. Even on the day when Rosanne Barr, who had been held up as an on-air representative of Trump supporters, was fired by ABC for continued overt racism, that network and every other was careful to make it clear that they didn’t think other Trump supporters were in Camp Trump because of racism. There is still a heavy push toward the idea that support for Trump can be divorced from support from Trump’s worst racist statements and actions. Not only is that not true, it was exactly those worst, most racist statements that created Trump’s support.

It wasn’t economic anything that united Trump voters. It wasn’t their religious beliefs. It wasn’t some half-baked form of populism that appeared as a response to an overreaching government or oppressive taxation. They weren’t sad about the coal mine, or worried about their job building washing machines.

It was just racism. Trump voters are marginally wealthier than the median. Somewhat older than most. Generally better off then the average family. And far, far whiter than the nation they now control. Their biggest concern in promoting white status over any other issue. Racism is Trumpism.

It’s a racism that Trump supporters justify, both in their minds and in public, by perpetuating the same myths that Trump has been selling—that other races are violent, backward and incapable of running a “civilized” government. It’s why Trump doesn’t talk about immigrants seeking asylum at the border, he talks about MS-13. The “animals” remark was no accident. It’s exactly where Trump, and Trump supporters, want to go.

In a recent column, Leonard Pitts published several letters that Trump supporters had sent his way.

“… people like you hungar for change that puts people like me in the back of the bus. You seem egar to know what it would be like to be in the driver's seat. You need look no further than Zimbabwe and South Africa. When people like you started driving the bus, the wheels came off. That's what terrifies people like me.”

That’s an all-too-general attitude. One that doesn’t just equate whiteness with traditional superiority, but with competence. One that says that denying rights to people of color is justifiable. It’s a position the right has been building for decades on scaffolds of mythical welfare queens, Mexican rapists and black thugs. It’s a movement Trump was well-positioned to lead.

And now, in the name of upholding white supremacy, Trump’s supporters are willing to sacrifice anything else. Anything.

That includes the environment and the future of their own children. As a paper by DePauw researcher Salil Benegal shows, the clearest connection between attitudes about climate change isn’t education level. It’s race. It’s an attitude that was cemented even before Trump took office, as many white people associated both climate change and the Paris agreement with President Obama. And if Obama liked it … it must be bad for white people.

This doesn’t mean that everyone who is a climate change denier is a racist. But the research does indicate that many of those who shifted to stating that they did not believe in climate change did so explicitly because the issue was associated with Obama. The study showed a direct link between this shift in attitude and “racial resentment.” The same people who were afraid of what they saw as growing status for African Americans, associated that “threat” not just with Obama, but with every issue he supported. Again, while Trump supporters may hide behind mock scientific articles thrown up on Fox News, or statements from right-wing politicians that pretend there is some disagreement in the scientific consensus, the real underlying cause is the same as that hiding behind economic anxiety. It’s just racism.

On climate change, Trump supporters may feel safe in resting on their racist laurels. After all, there is an entire industry dedicated to producing materials generated with the intent of providing cover on this issue. And for most people, it’s easy to pretend that climate change is still something in the distant future. Some Trump supporters, who already gravitate to anti-Obama propaganda sources rife with climate change denial, may have become genuinely convinced that climate change is either not real, or won’t affect their lives. Climate change is a place where they feel like they can be not just secret racists, hiding behind a smoke screen of fake science, but safe racists, untouched by their actions. If, as Upton Sinclair said, it's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on not understanding it,” that understanding comes even more grudgingly when racial status is perceived to be at stake.

But that doesn’t mean that Trump supporters aren’t willing to sacrifice something visible to maintain white privilege. In fact, they’re willing to sacrifice almost anything except white privilege.

In a study called "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy" Clemson professor Steven Miller and Texas A & M researcher Nicholas Davis link increasing white racism with an increase in support for authoritarian rule, and with declining support for democracy. What Miller and Davis show is that the groundwork for Trump was laid, not in economic anxiety from former factory workers, but in a reaction of white voters who saw Barack Obama’s election as a direct threat to white rule.

The desire to protect white privilege is tied not just to obvious policies—like Trump’s attacks on immigrants and the Muslim ban—it’s linked to a willingness to surrender more power to the military. To remove the checks and balances of government. And to remove the idea of democracy from America.

We show that the new scholarly concern with American democracy’s trajectory in the age of Trump belies these trends that have been hiding in plain sight … for over 20 years. Our scholarly interest in democracy’s development and growth elsewhere in the world may have glossed over democracy’s gangrene in the United States.

Like Pitts’s letter writer, the voters who support Trump are willing to justify breaking democracy … to save white America.

From the moment he came gliding down on claims of brown-skinned “rapists” and “murderers,” Trump has made it clear who he was. And early Trump supporters like Steve Bannon already knew what the media still doesn’t seem to get: Racism isn’t Trump’s Achilles’ heel. It’s his strength.

Now that Trump’s attacks on the justice system have erased the distance that had been built up since Watergate, Trump knows that, should he move against the FBI, he has one group that will have his back. So long as he hates the right people.