Did Trump beget all of this? If so, what begot Trump? Erickson argued that the fault lay with Beltway Republicans. “They’ve broken so many promises,” he said. “They promised to defund the president’s immigration plan. They promised to defund Obamacare. They promised to fight the president on raising the debt limit. At some point, the base of the party just wants to burn the house down and start over.”

But even Erickson did not seem convinced that this alone explained what he saw as a nihilistic turn among Republican voters. “I do think there are a lot of people that have just concluded that this is it — that if we don’t get the election right, the country’s over,” he said. As to where they might have gotten that idea, Erickson knew the answer. It was the apocalyptic hymn sung by talk-radio hosts like his friend and mentor Rush Limbaugh, whose show Erickson once guest-hosted, though in the time of Trump, it seemed unlikely he would receive another invitation.

This February, Limbaugh, who has applauded Trump without endorsing him outright, posed to Erickson the question of whether a commentator should try to act as “the guardian of what it means to be a conservative.” In effect, the legend of talk radio was laying down an unwritten commandment of the trade, which applies as well to cable TV: Do not attempt to lead your following.

This was simple enough for an avowed Trump supporter like Ingraham. “Laura’s never missed an opportunity to build her career on the backs of others,” Erickson told me. He counted Hannity as another mentor and admired his entrepreneurial cunning, saying: “Sean reflects his audience. He’s not going to leave his audience.” On his own radio show, Erickson found that the more he denounced Trump, the more female listeners he picked up. But most of the 300,0000 people who tuned in weekly during rush hour were men. While Erickson refused to abandon his principles, he did not wish to go broke, either.