Well they have to rationalise being duped so completely. Trump just used this, along with other lies, in an opportunistic and cynical way, to achieve his political and personal ends.
That’s why right wing white supremacist groups like the proud boys are now turning on him. They genuinely believed he was committed to their cause, albeit I must say an immoral and shameful cause.
Some people still believe in this ludicrous conspiracy even now. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is still espousing the same rhetoric, and has started impeachment of President Biden on his first day in office.
It’ll go nowhere of course, and has rightly garnered widespread ridicule, but how many mainstream Republicans were prepared to oppose the election results based on a lie? That’s a more deeply worrying trend, is how mainstream politicians are sucked into right wing extremists agenda based on an obvious and blatant lie, from a disgraced president who lied so relentlessly it was hard to keep up.
Worryingly, all it takes is for people to feel their views are not being reflected by government as if that is a right anyway, and for a cynically dishonest politician like Trump to pretend he understands and is on their side. We don’t appear to have learned anything from history at all. Farage has played the same game here in the UK, playing on people’s fears and bigotry. All they need do is start with a small lie hidden in a larger one, but with some element of truth to prop it up.
It’s Orwellian…