All this said, I have to add that I don’t know if more fact-checking would have mattered. Tom Brokaw of NBC did outstanding work challenging Trump, but he says that when journalists have indeed questioned Trump’s untrue statements, nothing much happens: “His followers find fault with the questions, not with his often incomplete, erroneous or feeble answers.”

Likewise, Bob Schieffer of CBS tells me: “I’m not sure more fact-checking would have changed that much. We’re in a new world where attitude seems to count more than facts.”

There you go. It wouldn't have mattered. It didn't matter with my brother. Trump has a svengali-like hold on his supporters. As Olivia Nuzzi tweeted, "They don't care" about Trump's policy proposals, they wouldn't have cared about fact-checking. They see Trump as "someone who is not going to let them get screwed over." There is a market for an authoritarian personality with mean, racist, rhetoric in American politics, there has been for a very long time. "We're voting with our middle finger" one Trumpist said to the Washington Post. The Trumpists enjoy scaring other people; they welcome the destruction of the GOP; they relish appalling "the politically correct," as they see them; they crave the attention. They have felt ignored and forgotten in the Obama years. They want "their"-White-country back. They are ignorant, selfish, and racist. They are narcissists: "They don't care." There is no more to understanding this than all of that but to understand that truly is to put the understanding where it belongs, on Trump supporters. They must not be "understood" further, not pandered to, not courted!; no sensitive feel-their-pain study. They have been ignored and forgotten, they contribute nothing, they have nothing to contribute! They should be ignored and forgotten. And they will be ignored and forgotten again. After they are routed. They have now grouped themselves together under Trump who they feed and from whom they draw sustenance. They are easy to identify. "Let one hundred flowers bloom," Mao Zedong said. The better to cut off their heads. The Trumpists will be politically destroyed, utterly.