Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely... but we usually focus on the behavior of the guy with the power, and not on what happens to the hearts and minds of the people being corrupted all the way down the line.
Corruption is corrosive, and really hard to reverse. Even reacting to corruption is so often corrupt in the end. After it's clear that the way to go is to bribe someone, or to "get something" on him, what else is there in the end? Stand up and blow a whistle? Sure, that happens, and it's courageous, but there is such a price to pay: where is what's his name now, or what's her name? Yeah: out of power, that's where. It's easier just to find a way to go along and hope to get along "for now".
A lot of money and power have been put into propping up this sociopath that the GOP once thought they could use and then discard when they'd got what they wanted out of his presidential pen and their own clout in Congress. Now that thoroughly corrupt and Trump-hijacked GOP is finding their boy more and more of an embarrassment, and problematic for their prospects in 2024, but so far they can't undo the certainty of Trump's base that he's the only one who can fix everything. Oops. Well maybe after the 2022 midterms...
Meanwhile Trump carries on with his grifting of millions more dollars he'll use for legal fees, supporting pols he expects can put him back into power in 2024, making mischief under the table in god knows what ways.
The terrible irony there is that Trump's supporters do believe "only he can fix everything," even while they also figure that he can't do it without their help and so they chip into what they still see as a good cause. After all, from their point of view, how can it
not be a good cause if everything isn't fixed yet and he's the only one who can fix it?
So yeah I'd like to see that pie chart of what has happened to their contributions too, and it's heartbreaking that ordinary people will put their money into supporting a sociopath now fleeing legal consequences for his own behavior.
But I'm not convinced Trump's supporters would ever believe any assertion of misdirected contributions.
It's so hard to look in the mirror and say
wow, that guy took me on some ride, and for what? Three rich white folks in black dresses on the Supreme Court who ended up making my niece bear a stillborn fetus, and some tax breaks for people making money I'll never see, and I gave him a dime outta my broke-ass pocket?