“You are the man!”, “I have supported you every step of the way”, “You are our champion! Bless you!”, “I follow you! Love your tweets”, “God is Good!”, “Love my President! Keep winning”, “We’ve got your back”.



The messages were handwritten on a birthday card for Donald Trump, who turns 72 next week, along with an illustration of a birthday cake with candles, on each of which was written a boast: ultra-low unemployment, US energy exporter, less red tape, tax cuts, jobs jobs jobs, stronger military and stronger economy. At the bottom, amid a sea of stars and stripes, was the legend: “From all of us, the deplorables” – a reference to Hillary Clinton’s slight of the Trump base.

The card was on display at a ritzy Washington hotel, at a conference organised by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a rightwing Christian group. Speaker after speaker extolled Trump’s accomplishments in banishing the legacy of Barack Obama and furthering the Republican agenda. He was, they said, giving them exactly what they wanted – indeed, more than they had dared dream of.

Such adulation and hero worship – Trump has the second-highest “own party” approval rating (87%) of any postwar president at the 500-day mark, behind only George W Bush after 9/11 – send a message of positive reinforcement crucial to understanding his swaggering self-confidence, lack of self-doubt and airy sense of impunity.

It was all on display again this week as he attacked allies such as Canada and France while suggesting adversary Russia should rejoin the G7, disinvited the Super Bowl winners from the White House and instead hosted a “celebration of America” that consisted of little more than a four-minute speech and patriotic songs, and continued his celebrity-obsessed approach to presidential pardons by suggesting that Muhammad Ali might be next – even though the supreme court overturned the boxer’s conviction for draft evasion in 1971.

Describing his approach to next week’s historic denuclearisation summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, Trump offered what might be a summary of his governing philosophy: “I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done.”

In other words, critics said, winging it.

To them, and to many watching around the world, the frequent question is how does Trump get away with it? The answer lies on that birthday card and in that rock-solid support among religious conservatives, who have trained themselves to turn a blind eye to the thrice-married Trump’s sordid past – the Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about groping women, the allegations of an affair with the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels – and incendiary tweets and focus instead on his actions and policies.

Even when he’s made us nervous, he’s gotten a great result. That’s what we’re hoping for on trade and North Korea Bryan Hughes, Texas state senate

For many, it was a difficult journey to supporting the president. But at this week’s conference, some inflection points during the 2016 election were identified: the decision to name Mike Pence, an evangelical who opposed gay marriage, as his running mate; Trump’s release of a shortlist of candidates from which he would fill a supreme court vacancy; and a presidential debate in which the Republican nominee falsely claimed: “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

Recalling that moment from the stage on Friday, the White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway recoiled in her chair and said: “The country, I think, reflexively went ‘Oooh!’ And I thought, that’s terrific. And those are his words and he has said it again since and he absolutely believes we should call it out, how extreme that is.”

On this and other issues, from appointing judges to slashing taxes to gutting federal regulations, conservatives hail Trump for achieving what even Ronald Reagan could not. “Day after day, the sheer volume and velocity of the way the president works is really stunning,” Conway claimed.

Attendees were also full of praise. Bryan Hughes, a member of the Texas senate, said in an interview: “Many conservatives supported President Trump if only because of the alternative and were maybe not sure what to expect, but he has far exceeded expectations.

Philadelphia Eagles fans sing during the ‘celebration of America’ event on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

“I don’t like everything the president says but I strongly support the actions he is taking, the policies he’s implementing. I think it’s fair to say conservatives and evangelicals support President Trump in such large numbers because we’re pro-life.”

Hughes and others manage to tune out of Trump’s wayward approach to diplomacy.

“I am learning to look at the results,” he added. “President Trump does not handle these matters in the way presidents normally do. But so far, even when he’s made us nervous during the process, he’s gotten a great result. That’s what we’re hoping for on trade, North Korea, all these huge matters he’s dealing with.”

‘God uses flawed people’



Lesser egos than Trump’s might have been dented on Tuesday when it turned out that fewer than 10 Philadelphia Eagles players intended to show up at the White House. Instead he brazened it out by throwing “a celebration of America” with 40 national flags on display on the South Lawn, prompting columnists to quote Samuel Johnson’s dictum that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. One guest sank to his knee during the national anthem in solidarity with professional football players’s protests against racial injustices. Another heckled the president, who struggled with the lyrics of God Bless America.

But Jasper Preston, an African American man wearing a “Make America great again” hat to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, dismissed the controversy. “I laugh at the Philadelphia Eagles: if you want to make a sacrifice, you have to accept the consequences. I applaud Donald Trump for holding his ground and being a man of his word.”

Preston, 30, who works for a not-for-profit organisation in Atlanta, claimed Trump had spent decades combating racism and that his offer to pardon Ali, the former world heavyweight champion whose lawyer said the gesture was unnecessary, should be taken in good faith.

“Saying no to a good intention is absurd. Don’t call him a racist because he wants to do something good for someone. You’re trying to fight racism and sometimes you’ll miss the mark and sometimes the mark is moving.”

Preston also sought to explain Christians’ support for the president: “It’s about his calling for his position. We didn’t want him to be Christlike; he’s human like you and me. He’s made morally and ethically wrong decisions in the past and so have I. When the Access Hollywood tape came out, I was the first to say that was wrong and he said that was wrong. God uses flawed people to get the job done. God has never used a perfect man because there is no perfect man: we are yet to have a perfect man as president.”

Opponents of Trump have long hoped for “a pivot” and change in his behaviour. But the constant applause from his base not only deters any such change – it encourages more of the same. The president was given dire warnings, for example, about the consequences of moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but conference speakers cited it as one his best decisions, a promise other presidents of both parties made but only he had kept.

The whole party has got Stockholm syndrome. He wore them down and they decided it was just easier to get on board Charlie Sykes

The pattern is also inescapable in the Republican party, now Trump’s party in the eyes of the US media. The Axios website summed up: “In 500 days, Trump’s hijacking of the formerly conservative GOP is complete – an astonishing accomplishment. The majority party in America is fully defined by his policies, his popularity with the base, his facts-be-damned mentality, his ability to control and quiet virtually all Republican elected officials.”

The New York Times editorial board suggested this week’s primary elections “underscored the striking degree to which President Trump has transformed the Republican party from a political organization into a cult of personality”.

For example, John Cox, a businessman running for governor in the Republican wasteland of California, embraced Trump and received a boost from the president on Twitter. He finished the primary as runner-up to Gavin Newsom, the Democratic lieutenant governor.



By contrast, the congresswoman Martha Roby is still paying the price for demanding Trump drop out of the presidential election after the Access Hollywood tape. He ignored her advice and won her Alabama district by 32%. This week, she failed to clinch the Republican nomination and must now run off against Bobby Bright, who ran advertisements accusing her of having “turned her back on President Trump when he needed her the most”.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox speaks in San Diego, California. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator, said: “In every state I’ve seen, Republican candidates for office feel they have to vie with each other for who is the most pro-Trump. Any dissent from Trumpism poses a threat to your viability within the Republican party. The political leadership is taking its cue from the base, and the base is all in for Donald Trump.”

With a mix of demagoguery, policy expediency and anti-liberal sentiment, reinforced by Fox News and other conservative media, Trump has a tighter grip on his party than most past presidents had, even as he turns its free-market orthodoxy upside down. Sykes added: “Is this Donald Trump’s party? The answer is yeah. The transformation of the Republican party into a Trumpist party is breathtaking and so thorough.

“American politics has become so tribal, but we also found out how transactional Republican politics is: how they were willing to look the other way if they got a policy victory and, quite frankly, how there was a loss of will to stand up to him. The whole party has got Stockholm syndrome. In the end he wore them down and they decided it was just easier to get on board.”

‘Everything he says gets somebody pissed off’

The so-called Never Trump rebellion is in full retreat. “We are very much in exile at the moment,” Sykes admitted. The Arizona senators Jeff Flake and John McCain have condemned Trump in harsh terms, but Flake is stepping down and McCain is seriously ill with brain cancer.

This week,the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House oversight committee, broke with Trump over his baseless claim that spies infiltrated his 2016 campaign. Both have announced they are retiring at the end of this term.

Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado, said: “Paul Ryan and others are still trying to undermine him. If the Trump phenomenon had not been so successful, we would not be seeing the kind of antics we are seeing from his opponents.

“Does he have any more of the base than he had when he won? That is the question. I would imagine there is less hostility among Republicans, but I do not know.”

For his part, Tancredo voted for Trump and would so so again: “I’m extremely pleased. Everything he says gets somebody pissed off. I like that.”

Another viewpoint was recently expressed by Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner. “There is no Republican party,” the former House speaker said during a policy conference in Michigan. “There’s a Trump party.

“The Republican party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.”