I remain as I was in 2016: deeply confused how anyone with integrity can support Donald Trump for president. As he has gone bankrupt numerous times, and has frittered away millions of other people’s money on failed ideas like steaks, ties and a corrupt “university,” to name a few, he should be seen by the public as a simple-minded con man. Yet 42% or so of Americans wear their MAGA hats and seem to think that a guy who brags about being fabulously wealthy is a “regular guy.”

My admitted cognitive dissidence suggests there are some who genuinely understand Trump is an immoral sexual assaulter and money thief (just ask any of the hundreds of businesses and people that Trump has never paid for services rendered) whose monetary butt was saved when NBC drove a truckload of cash to his office and asked him to host “The Apprentice.” These people know Trump is what we in political science call a “useful idiot,” in that there is “no there there” (with apologies to Gertrude Stein) intellectually, but for all his blather, he might well be influenced to follow policies that help his enablers.

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I suspect that is why we’ve seen so much of Elon Musk around Trump. Though Musk isn’t the sharpest tool in the tray (he didn’t actually start most of the companies he brags about, such as SpaceX and Tesla), he does know if Trump wins, Musk’s fortune of $264 billion will go up, due to tax cuts for the richest among us and other likely rich-favoring policies.

And that brings me to an aside (Editor: again?). So, Musk has more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. How much richer is he than he would be if he (only) had, say, $200 billion? What can’t he buy at that wealth level he could buy with $264? This is just wealth accumulation for wealth’s sake and boy does he need to pay more taxes, but I digress…

Trump is not, by any reasonable definition, an actual Republican. He was a Democrat for a long time, even donating to a Kamala Harris campaign twice when she was running for reelection to the Attorney General’s office in California. He gave $5,000 once and then another $1,000, and daughter Ivanka kicked in another $2,000. Oh, and that’s the same daughter who while “working” in the White House as a senior advisor to her own father, magically obtained 41 trademarks approved by the Chinese government (a rather important element in the Trump national security “policy”), and the ones she applied for after her daddy became president were approved by the Chinese 40% faster than before. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right? But Hunter’s laptop!

I’m also sure there are a fair number of true believers, though that number has dropped, at least at the executive level, significantly since Trump left office. Dozens of former Trump administration officials, many at the very top of his team, now decry Trump as unfit and dangerous. These are lifelong Republicans, like Dick Cheney, who realize the true threat a second Trump term would mean for global security and our nation, and now support Harris.

Let’s reflect back a few years, shall we? Let’s ponder the work of what many of today’s MAGA folks see as the halcyon days of government, the two terms of Ronald Reagan. He was a man’s man and a true GOPer, at least in the muddled memory of many.

But after a relatively ineffective first term, where he did get a tax cut passed and the size of government actually got bigger, Reagan realized the simple fact the trickledown nonsense he and others spouted was, well, nonsense.

Simply put, the second-term Reagan was kind of a progressive. Sure, he still talked the talk, but at the end of the day, he accepted several liberal ideas and, to his credit, advanced them because he saw they were the right way forward. His historic Tax Reform Act of 1986 contained a number of progressive ideas, including raising corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years, and closed a number of tax loopholes for big corporations. His plan increased the standard deduction for most non-rich Americans, to the point those under the poverty line paid no federal taxes at all. Heck, Reagan raised taxes no fewer than three times due to the economic recession and other challenges he faced. Oh, and let’s not forget Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which created, among other things, an amnesty program and a path to citizenship for migrant workers.

So, what has Trump actually done?

Well, recall despite his bragging about 500 miles of wall construction, he actually built, over the course of four years, only 52 miles of new border wall. Roughly 458 miles of old wall were repaired, often with refurbishing that had been scheduled long before Trump took over.

Clearly, the sainted Ronald Reagan wouldn’t get the GOP nomination in these Trumpian times. His practical policies — sticking to conservative principles when possible and being pragmatic when necessary — served him well. But for today’s GOP, compromise is a dirty word, and a form of cultish absolutism has firmly taken over.

Only the most deliberately obtuse don’t accept Trump is a serial and petty liar. He has a well documented history of falsehoods. You should certainly question the character of a man who lies with such ease, and frankly, about such little stuff. His attorney general, at least the one that held that office on Jan. 6, 2021, Bill Barr, resigned in disgust. But Trump has insisted he fired Barr. That’s a lie, and there is documentation to absolutely prove it. And don’t get me started on crowd sizes. Trump has the hallmarks of a shallow, insecure and foolish man. Yet an amazing number of my fellow Americans have joined his cult of personality. I can only hope his final defeat, which I sincerely hope comes next month, might somehow break the miasma of dishonesty so many are so OK with.

One guy OK with Trump’s lies is his running mate. After having never worked other than being supported by another MAGA mega-rich guy, J.D. Vance ran for the U.S. Senate two years ago, utilizing the single largest Senate campaign donation in history, at least $15 million, Vance won his seat (while, interestingly, decrying Trump as “an idiot” and “reprehensible” while comparing him to Adolf Hitler. I wonder how long it took Vance, once Trump picked him, to scrub all the anti-Trump stuff from his social media. I’m guessing he had help, renouncing that which he once claimed to believe in takes time).

In his one debate, a skilled orator in J.D. Vance wove a tale about the Trump years in office that was both charming and dishonest. For example, he lied about more oil being produced under Trump than now and he lied, most chillingly, about Jan. 6, 2021. Simply put, Vance wove a tale about a history that never happened in support of a candidate who never was. But he was charming.

I worry these lies might be just enough to get Trump in office for another term, wherein I predict he will quickly (as before) tire of the actual governance part of the job and will spend even more hours watching and calling into Fox News. He is four years older now, and certainly more intellectually degraded and feeble, the very same reasons that led President Joe Biden to step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate.

I think if Reagan was alive today, he’d be nervous.

We’ll see what happens in November.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.