There was even a fleeting moment on January 6 when I, locked down in a room marked “PRESS” with other reporters and trying to keep quiet so the marauders wouldn’t decide to bust down the door, allowed myself to wonder if this was actually the moment when Republicans might finally, en masse, move to cut off ties with Trump.

But not long after the lowest political moment of my lifetime, they all got back on script…

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that people like McCarthy and Graham went running back to Trump so easily. Perhaps it was objectionably naive for a reporter who covers these people to ever think otherwise. But that doesn’t mean we should view it as just how things go. It is not great, for anyone, that Republicans glided so effortlessly back to life under Trump’s thumb. He did just about the worst thing a president could do: attempted to overturn an election that he lost to stay in power. And he is, a year later, the clear-cut frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. If he becomes president again, who can credibly warn him that there would be consequences for any of his actions? What Republicans, hoping to get reelected, would choose to condemn him over any action, after seeing the hell he put those who called him out over Jan. 6 through? Republicans are back on script, and I don’t see a plausible happy ending.