When Donald Trump sets out to bring others around to his point of view, he tends to do so incrementally, in steps that are as remarkable for their lack of subtlety as they are for their eventual success. When he put forth his grand theory of birtherism, he began by suggesting half-jokingly that Barack Obama was not from the United States: “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said in 2011. The next year, he claimed on Twitter that an “extremely credible source” had confirmed the theory in a call to his office, and so on and so forth until his campaign culminated in a full-throated demand that Obama produce his birth certificate for professional examination. Trump seems to be taking the same tack in his gradual endorsement of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, offering first silence, then an initial tepid endorsement of Moore over “liberal person” Doug Jones and, finally, on Monday, an outright rallying cry. And with Trump standing steadfast, shameless in his desire for victory and bound to his indomitable ego, the Republican National Committee crumbled under his will and re-endorsed the former judge.

It was a stunning reversal from November, when the R.N.C. abruptly yanked its funding and field staffers from Moore’s Senate race after The Washington Post published the accounts of four women, who accused Moore of making sexual advances on them as teenagers. Trump himself initially hesitated to voice his support for Moore, and even populist-nationalist kingmaker Steve Bannon showed a certain amount of reluctance in backing the polarizing candidate, reportedly telling those close to him that if he discovered Moore was lying about the validity of the accusations against him, “I will put him in a grave myself.” As weeks passed and more women came forward, however, the growing clamor only seemed to empower Moore, who pulled from Trump’s Access Hollywood playbook and openly challenged the claims of his accusers, refusing point-blank to drop out of the race. That defiance, it appears, brought Trump back around and, on Monday the president tweeted his full-throated support. “Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama,” he wrote, listing a number of Republican agendas that needed to be fulfilled, including his beloved border wall, and calling Jones a “Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!”

Mere hours later, the R.N.C. quietly reversed itself, sending its staffers back to Alabama with no public announcement. (An R.N.C. official confirmed the plans to the Post.) Other organs of the right wing fell in line, too, with pro-Trump group, America First Action, announcing that it would spend up to $1.1 million in the race. If said organizations had hoped their hypocrisy would fly under the radar, it was only emphasized by a Monday report in the Post that one of Moore’s accusers who came forward following the initial round of accusations had discovered hard evidence of her relationship with Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, including a handwritten card and contemporaneous notes.

Despite the R.N.C.’s flip-flop, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is led by Mitch McConnell, has refused to follow suit. (Even if it did, Moore, a Bannon-backed populist whose nomination McConnell attempted to block multiple times without success, would likely turn down the group’s assistance.) But even Senate Republicans have taken a softer approach to the Moore conundrum in recent days. Texas Senator John Cornyn called for a potential ethics probe should Moore take office, but cautioned that the race is out of his control: “None of us get to vote on who’s the senator from Alabama. Just Alabama voters do. So I think we have to respect their decision,” he said on Monday, echoing McConnell’s statements in television interviews over the weekend. Trump, a man who has largely succeeded in convincing his allies that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe will conclude post haste (it won’t), and that his tax plan aligns with a populist-nationalist agenda (it doesn’t), appears to have bent the situation to fit his worldview and, has once again, taken the Republican party with him.