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The headlines regarding the events surrounding the Correspondent’s Dinner on Saturday night should read: Trump Lies Again.

On Truth Social he wrote: “What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE.”

It’s all a lie. No one, no one, has been demanding a ballroom except Trump, ever.

Two other factors are pertinent.

First, Trump and everyone else were in far less danger than all the school kids who’ve experienced the trauma of a gun assault across America for the last several years about which Republicans and Trump have done nothing.

The fact is, Cole Tomas Allen was a floor above where the dinner was being held. He never made it off the floor he entered. Neither Trump nor anyone else at the dinner were in serious danger. Only security who did their job well.

Second, the Correspondent’s Dinner is NOT hosted by the White House. Presidents have no involvement in its planning. Saturday was the first time Trump himself has attended. It is, dare I say it, the Correspondent’s Dinner. It has never been controlled by or even held at the White House.

But how crass can you be? Trump uses an incident like this to promote his unpopular ballroom the American people know is all about his ego.

To see how truly crass his ballroom talk is, contrast it with his failure to request a dime to protect America’s children, instead instructing his administration to do whatever it can to loosen gun regulations that would allow potential school shooters easier access to them.

Trump’s response to Saturday night proves there are no words adequate to describe how truly awful a person and a president he is. But that doesn’t worry him because he believes his supporters don’t care what he says or does.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” is what he said at Dordt College in Sioux Center, IA as he began his first presidential campaign.

I have a clergy friend who has said many times that the statement Trump made in Iowa is all we need to know about him.

I would only add that it is also all we need to know about his voters. Since he made the statement there have been no reports that any of them was offended by it. I suppose they took it as a compliment of their loyalty to him.

It was hardly that. What Trump was saying about them is that there is no depth of moral low he can go that they won’t go with him, no line in the sand he can cross that they won’t cross with him.

For a long time now I have thought the resistance Trump supporters have shown to the truth about him was stunning. But an Australian writer recently described Trumpers in a way that immediately changed my view of them and helped me to understand that resistance to truth better.

He called them “groupies.”

That captures it better than anything I’ve read. Trump voters are NOT his political base, as the news media calls them. They are his “groupies.” Think about it.

Groupies are fans, not political supporters. They are willing to do anything to have personal contact with the star they idolize. They don’t care what kind of person their idol is. They just want to be around them.

Donald Trump knows he has fans, which is why he thought his popularity as a reality television show host qualified him to be president. But he also knows they are groupies, which explains why he has no concern for how extreme he may become. Groupies don’t follow their hero because he makes sense. Their devotion is emotional, not rational, and Trump knows it.

Star politicians don’t respect groupies. They use them, exploit them, and then cast them aside when they are no longer useful. Good-bye Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Joe Rogan, and all the rest. You’re not leaving him, he’s leaving you.

The truth is, there is no fracture in the Trump base. It’s a conflict between Trump and his groupies, something that was quite predictable. Groupies don’t last. They ultimately drift away, lose interest, become tired of getting nothing in return for their devotion.

That’s what’s going on now. Trump groupies are beginning not to listen as they once did. Too many of his promises have proven empty. They are realizing they’ve heard it all from him before and so it means less to them than it once did.

The news media is trying to make a big deal out of the conflict, but it’s little more than a distraction. Most of Trump’s groupies will stick with him. Those who don’t will not switch to Democrats. They’ll just disappear politically.

That’s why Trump’s poll numbers don’t matter. He will continue to go up or down a few points based on how many groupies stick with him and how many drop away. Their loyalty is emotional, not rational.

Trump knowing that is how he took control of the Republican Party, and no one will replace him because no one will command the devotion Trump groupies have given to him, not J. D. Vance, not Marco Rubio, not anyone.

Our concern must be focused on waking people up to what too many of them became complacent about in recent years, that elections have consequences.

Progressives fell victim to the silly thinking that all politicians are the same, all look out for themselves, and so it doesn’t matter who wins.

Trump is living proof of how foolish and dangerous such thinking is. All politicians are not the same, and the survival of democracy now depends on people waking up to that fact of life.

Whatever reason people had for not voting in the last election, would any of them dare to argue that the country is better off for electing Trump instead of Kamala Harris?

There was a time when Democrats and Republicans disagreed on policy issues. Today the difference is between who believes in constitutional law and who doesn’t, believes in the difference between a president and an autocrat, believes in the difference between three equal branches of government or a compliant Congress that takes its orders from the president, believes in restricting the right to vote and who doesn’t.

Trump groupies have never cared about government, about the rule of law, about national unity, about the common good, about freedom and justice for all.

They care only about their idol, their leader, their hero, and when that well runs dry, they start dropping fast from an unquenched thirst for an emotional high.

The moral imperative of this moment is for the non-groupie majority of Americans to come to the aid of their country by exerting our power in all the ways we can, from protests to demonstrations to voting.

If we do that, and it looks as if we are, we will have no need to worry or even think about Trump groupies.

We will be armed with something Trump fears the most, Volkesmacht, power of the people.