That’s why Trump will never drop his fraud fantasies: He defines truth by feelings, not by evidence. “You know when you win and when you lose,” he told the audience in Phoenix. At CPAC, he joked about how he judges polls: “If it’s bad, I just say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say, ‘That’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.’ ” But in the same speech, he made clear that he really does judge evidence this way. He noted that in 2016, a poll said he would lose Wisconsin, but “I won the state. So that’s a fake poll.” But in 2020, it was the other way around: His pollster, “one of the most respected,” assured him he would win, but he lost Wisconsin and the election. Any other politician would blame his pollster. Trump says his pollster was right, so the results were wrong.

Trump won’t settle for McCarthy’s talk of taking the House next year. He wants to be vindicated now. He’s claiming fraud in more and more states, including Texas and New Hampshire. He’s demanding prosecutions and his own reinstatement, on the grounds that the presidency, like stolen jewelry, must be returned. On Saturday, he implied that Republicans were entitled to seize Georgia’s electoral votes because the state “couldn’t count their votes accurately.” “We don’t have the luxury to sit back and to wait until the next election,” he told the crowd.

If Trump retains power over the GOP and continues to make his demands central to the midterms—and there’s good reason to believe he’ll do both—he could damage his party considerably, as he did in Georgia. On Saturday, he said the lesson of Georgia was that the party should talk more about the alleged fraud of 2020. That’s bonkers, but Republican leaders continue to glorify Trump and humor his delusions. In part, that’s because they’re afraid of him; in part, it’s because in Georgia, he cost them only two seats. Next year, he could cost them many more.