Wannabe dictator and his cult base working each other into a conspiracy frenzy

Members of cults are - pretty much by definition, I guess - incredibly gullible.   And cult leaders, if not from the start, but eventually, live in a fantasy world whereby they have convinced themselves of their greatness.

And hence we have the Orange One in the White House encouraging his disturbingly large number of cult followers to believe he has been the victim of a massive conspiracy with this tweet, which I reckon has a good chance of going down in history as the most insanely damaging thing Trump has done to his country:

Of course, Steve Kates is all on board - as are the great majority of people who comment at Catallaxy.   It's hard to credit how incredibly gullible they are - and the extent to which they Dunning-Kruger their way into thinking they understand everything from voting laws in any State in the US, or arcane statistical tests, all by relying solely on what a rabidly pro-Trump numbnut has postulated.

Anyway, Allahpundit at Hot Air has a good post about this pushback:

Joint statement from DHS agency, local officials: There’s no evidence that any voting system was in any way compromised

As he writes:

Here’s the statement from the “Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee,” which includes an alphabet soup of agencies at the federal and local level. The most noteworthy is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS created by Trump in 2018 and charged with protecting critical infrastructure like elections from cyberattacks. CISA has been debunking voter fraud claims on its official webpage and on social media for the past week; its director, Chris Krebs, has amplified those debunkings on social media as well, sometimes with his own comments. Earlier today, Reuters reported that the White House was pressuring CISA to remove a critique it posted of the Dominion “Hammer and Scorecard” conspiracy theory that Trump screamed about in a tweet this morning. Krebs refused, and told people around him that he expected to be fired because of it....

And what is it all for?   Just for the Orange Oaf to be able to pretend to himself and his cult base that he has to leave the White House, but it's not his fault:

The Washington Examiner is reporting that Trump’s advisors “believe he has accepted that he is unlikely to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory and will begin to plot life after the White House, including a 2024 run, once his campaign had exhausted all its lawsuits.” According to one, “I suspect that once those cases are heard and adjudicated, and once we get through the Georgia recount, that the president will begin the public off-ramp.” Okay, but I’m not sure how he takes that off-ramp after he tweeted to 80 million people this morning that “Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.” His fans are going to cling to that. What’s he supposed to say, “It totally happened but literally no one can prove it but somehow I know it’s true”? For cripes sake.

Anyway, I hope Biden hires Krebs back. We need more people with integrity in government. A lot, lot, lot more.

Just incredible - as is the lack of Republican big hitters who are refusing to call him out.