But Trump’s words are his substance. “Politics is persuasion as well as coercion,” the political scientist Jacob Levy wrote last week, rightly arguing that Trump has “changed what being a Republican means.” He has done so not through legislative coercion—indeed, he barely seems to understand the basics of American government—but through persuasive insistence. On issues as diverse as the alleged dangers of immigration and the nature of truth, Trump’s words have the power to cleave public opinion, turning nonpolitical issues into partisan maelstroms and turning partisan attitudes on their head. Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t produce the legislative artifacts that journalists typically use to analyze presidential power—it hasn’t translated to many actual laws passed. But the country is only just beginning to understand the scope of Trump’s lexical influence. [...]
But that’s precisely what’s happened. In 2014, about 60 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said the FBI was doing an "excellent" or "good" job. Last year, their views forked: Republican approval of the agency fell by about 10 points, while Democratic opinion improved by a similar margin. The same thing happened with football: Less than 20 percent of Republicans said they had unfavorable views of the NFL in the summer of 2017. But their disapproval had more than tripled by October, after Trump blasted players for kneeling to protest police violence during the national anthem. One analysis determined that, following the anthem protests, the NFL—a $13 billion industry that is the linchpin of the massive pay-TV ecosystem—became one of the most polarizing brands in the country. [...]
Finally, Trump’s refusal to accept critical information as true—from his denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election to the “alternative facts” about his inauguration size—has demolished the right’s faith and trust in a free press. Three-quarters of the GOP now say that news organizations make up anti-Trump stories. Even worse, a January study found that nearly half of Republicans believe that accurate stories that “cast a politician or political group in a negative light” are “always” fake news. Trump, along with Fox News, has given his supporters the license to self-deport from reality.
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