Why MAGA Thinks Trump Did Nothing Wrong

There is a question that has haunted American political life for nearly a decade.How does a man get caught on tape bragging about sexual assault, get found liable for sexual abuse in civil court, attempt to overturn a democratic election, walk away from four criminal indictments, and still have tens of millions of Americans convinced he did absolutely nothing wrong?The answer is not political. It is psychological. And the research explaining it is decades old.The Most Primitive Stage of Human Moral DevelopmentIn 1958, Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, published his doctoral dissertation identifying six stages of human moral development organized into three levels.The most primitive stage he identified he called obedience and punishment orientation. At this stage, an action is wrong only if it results in punishment. If you got away with it, it was not wrong. The worse the punishment, the worse the crime. No punishment means no crime. No arrest means no wrongdoing. No conviction means innocence.Kohlberg designed this stage to describe the moral reasoning of young children. A child does not avoid stealing a cookie because stealing is wrong. They avoid it because they will get caught and punished. Remove the punishment and the moral prohibition disappears with it.Kohlberg and subsequent researchers also found something that has significant implications for understanding contemporary American politics. While preconventional morality is developmentally normal in early childhood, some adolescents and adults continue operating at this level throughout their lives. Moral development, it turns out, is not automatic. It requires specific social experiences, relationships, and the freedom to reason through moral questions independently. Without those conditions, development stalls.Trump supporters are reasoning at the same level as a seven year old child. And the research tells us exactly why they got stuck there.Why They Never Developed Past ItBob Altemeyer, a psychologist at the University of Manitoba who spent over forty years studying authoritarian personalities, co-authored a book with former White House counsel John Dean in 2020 titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. The book draws on Altemeyer’s decades of research on what he called right-wing authoritarianism and documents the psychological profile of Trump’s base in precise detail.What Altemeyer found is that Trump supporters score exceptionally high on measures of authoritarian submission. The tendency to defer completely to authority figures on questions of right and wrong. Not to question them. Not to evaluate them independently. To accept their version of reality as the only legitimate version and to follow them regardless of what they do.This is not a random personality quirk. It is the direct product of authoritarian parenting.Psychologist Diana Baumrind identified authoritarian parenting as the style in which obedience is demanded, questioning is punished, and emotional warmth is withheld as a tool of behavioral control. Children raised this way are never given the opportunity to reason through moral questions independently. They are told what is right. They are punished for asking why. The authority figure becomes the source of all moral truth. And that pattern becomes the template for every authority relationship that follows.They grew up. Their moral reasoning did not.When Trump tells them the election was stolen, it was stolen. When he tells them the FBI is corrupt, it is corrupt. When he tells them he is the victim, he is the victim. Moral criticism of the authority figure is not processed as information. It is experienced as an attack. And Altemeyer’s research confirms that no amount of fact-based argument, independent inquiry, or evidence presentation will change the minds of people operating from this psychological position. The mechanism that would allow them to evaluate the authority figure from outside the authority relationship has never been developed.The Documented Record They Cannot SeeThe practical consequences of operating at the obedience and punishment orientation stage are visible in how Trump supporters process every documented fact about his conduct.Trump bragged about sexual assault on tape. No criminal punishment followed. To a mind at this developmental stage, nothing wrong occurred.Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in civil court. The Supreme Court upheld the decision. But there was no criminal conviction. No punishment in the terms their moral framework recognizes. Not wrong.Trump led an attempt to overturn a democratic election on January 6th, 2021. He was impeached for it. He was never removed. He was never convicted. He walked away. Not wrong.Four criminal indictments. No convictions. Not wrong.Every time this man escaped consequences, his supporters did not update their view of him. They updated their definition of right and wrong. Consequences are the only moral compass they have. And Trump has spent his entire career engineering the escape from consequences. He did not create followers who think crime is fine as long as you get away with it by accident. He found them. And then he showed them exactly what getting away with it looks like.They See Themselves in HimThere is one more layer to this that the research supports and that most political commentary misses entirely.Trump supporters do not just defend him because he got away with it. They see themselves in him.Research on authoritarian followers consistently finds that they are drawn to leaders who mirror their own psychological profile. The grandiosity. The victimhood. The refusal to accept accountability. The belief that rules apply to enemies but not to the in-group. The conviction that winning is the only moral standard that matters.These are not traits Trump’s supporters merely tolerate. They are traits his supporters recognize. A man who never grew up either. A man who throws tantrums when challenged, who cannot admit fault, who redefines reality when reality does not conform to his preferred self-image.For people whose own moral development stalled in childhood, Trump is not a cautionary tale. He is a permission structure. He is proof that you can operate at the most primitive level of human moral reasoning and still win. Still dominate. Still escape every consequence.That is the psychological bond. And it is far more durable than any political coalition built on policy agreement.The Only Thing That Breaks ItAltemeyer’s research is explicit on this point. Moral criticism does not work. Evidence does not work. Fact-checking does not work. The psychological systems at play are specifically designed to reject all of those inputs when they threaten the authority relationship or the group identity.The only thing that has historically broken the spell of authoritarian followership is the collapse of the authority figure’s ability to project invincibility. When the consequences finally arrive. When the punishment becomes undeniable. When the authority figure can no longer credibly claim to be winning.Trump has spent his entire career avoiding that moment. He may escape justice personally. Everyone around him will not. And when the consequences arrive for the people closest to him, the psychological foundation his movement is built on begins to crack.No arrest. No conviction. Not yet.He may escape justice. Everyone around him will not.Sources:Kohlberg, L. The Development of Modes of Thinking and Choices in Years 10 to 16. University of Chicago, 1958.Altemeyer, B. and Dean, J.W. Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. Melville House, 2020.Baumrind, D. Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1967.Monmouth University Polling Institute. Authoritarian Tendencies in the American Electorate, 2020. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lucasbean.substack.com/subscribe