At root, every argument in favor of Trump’s competence is a presumption based upon faith.

It is presumed, for example, that Donald Trump would be a decent manager, if only because he has managed a relatively large corporate enterprise for years. After the discerning figure discounts Trump’s profligacy, his bad investments, and his serial bankruptcies – one of which, miraculously, was a casino – that argument’s last cogent thread is essentially a statement of faith. Trump, these true believers contend, will hire those who deserve hiring and fire those who deserve firing (as though this was how government functioned). This is the crux of the argument Trump himself made regarding the scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs.

“You fix it with good management; you fix it by getting Trump elected president. That’s what you do,” said Trump, deploying all the depth of which he is capable. “I’d fire everybody, I’d get it — it would be so good. It would be so good.” Many believe this, but they should not presume that anyone else see that belief as something beyond their capacity for self-delusion. On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was arrested and charged with the alleged battery of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. Even following this arrest, Trump was determined to defend his associate and invite all message-derailing media scrutiny that will accompany this development. If Trump cannot even bring himself to fire a liability like Lewandowski, anyone who believes he will gut an embarrassingly incompetent department as America’s chief executive is only kidding themselves.

That wasn’t the only rickety faith-based argument in favor of Trump that had the legs swept out from under it on Tuesday. Early this year, the contemplative and reasonable conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt postulated that Republicans who would dare entertain the prospect of supporting Hillary Clinton over Trump in the general were making a grave error for a handful of reasons. His first and most compelling rationale was to appeal to the sobriety that should have been imposed on the Republican electorate when conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away. In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Hewitt noted that Trump would almost certainly appoint jurists with a more conservative record than would Clinton, and the urgency of a Supreme Court vacancy should compel every conservative of good conscience to back Trump.

Scalia’s absence on the Court is keenly felt, as our Jonathan Tobin observed. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court emerged deadlocked after considering the case of public school teachers in California who sued to overturn a California law that compelled them to surrender a portion of their salaries to a union to which they did not belong. The law, upheld by a lower court, affirmed that these teachers benefit from the union’s collective bargaining rights, whether they belonged to it or not. With the Supreme Court split 4-4, the lower court decision stands. For public sector unions, it represented the most sweeping victory of the relatively bleak Obama era.

Back to faith: If there is any evidence that Donald Trump is even remotely interested in appointing justices with reformist credentials when it comes to public sector unions, it’s hard to find. Following Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s decision to endorse Ted Cruz ahead of his state’s April 5 primary, Trump responded with his trademark petulance. He attacked Walker for presiding over acrimony – as any reformer does – and for failing to raise taxes in his state in order to pay for infrastructure projects. Trump’s refusal to defend Walker, who was forced to endure a recall election compelled by the Badger State’s public sector union members after he pushed through collective bargaining reforms, is pretty consistent on Trump’s part. The real estate mogul was defending collective bargaining rights even while conservatives across the nation were bearing the consequences associated with trying to reform them.

“I grew up with unions,” Trump told Human Events’ Jason Mattera in 2011. “New York is largely union. … I’ve had great relationships with unions, and I’ve made good deals. I’ve made a lot of money. I’ve made many billions of dollars, and in many cases, I’ve been dealing with unions. So, really, collective bargaining doesn’t bother me so much.”

To the extent that Trump had any praise for Walker, it was because he was perceived to be a “tough guy.” In fact, Trump’s pledge to turn back the clock on globalization and resurrect American manufacturing (textiles!) with a series of restrictions and tariffs on cheap foreign consumer goods would necessarily be a project that would benefit private, if not public sector, unions. Whether anyone believes this is good policy or not is subjective, to a point. What is objective, however, is that Trump is no friend to union busters or, presumably, those judges who would not seek to protect unions’ privileges from the bench.

Faith that Donald Trump would govern conservatively, not to mention competently, was always just that. It has been exposed as such day after day and for months. But the thing about faith is that it exists independent of objective evidence to support it. Don’t expect these developments to change anyone’s mind.